One day he went to the King and told him that his former companion was a good-for-nothing fellow, and that he had heard him trying to stir up mischief among the palace servants, and he suggested that he should be sent away and made to work for his living. So the King told the Queen, and the Queen settled that he should be apprenticed to a witch who lived not far off, and who wanted a man to work in the garden and help her to keep her magic books and tools in order. So the gardener’s son went.
When the day came for him to go he took his little bundle in his hand, looked up at the Princess’s window, and set off for the witch’s hut, which lay in the cleft of a hill. When he arrived there he saw, to his great surprise, that a cherry-tree, just like the one in the world he had left, was growing close to the door.
Inside the hut the witch was sitting by the fire; she was the most horrid-looking old woman imaginable; and her double chin hung down below the strings of her cap. Beside her, on the hearth, sat a little half-starved black cat with green eyes.
“I suppose you are the young man from the palace,” said she.
“I am,” said the gardener’s son.
He then made a bow to the witch, and being very well-mannered, he made a bow to the cat too.
“You needn’t do that,” said the witch. “I am one thing but the cat is quite another. His name is Sootface.”
“It’s not a very nice name,” said the cat, apologetically.
“And you are not a very nice cat,” said the witch; “so it is all the more appropriate.”