“Such a king’s son is being married to-day.”
She went to the house, and knocked at the door. A servant came.
“What do you want?”
She asked if there were any work to spin, and she would spin it.
And the servant went to tell it to the mistress. The lady ordered the servant to bring her in. She brought her in. And when she was in the kitchen, she showed the silk handkerchief which the king’s son had given her; and she began to blow her nose with that. The lady was quite astonished to see the girl blow her nose with such a beautiful handkerchief, as if it were nothing,[16] when her son had one just like it for his marriage-day. So she told her son, when he came back from the church, that she had a spinster who came from a great distance, and said to him:
“She has a silk handkerchief just like yours!”
And the king’s son said to his mother:
“I, too, must see this spinster that you have there.” And he began to go there.
And his mother said to him,
“But why must you see her?”