ess, I continued, "He who can say such a thing has no right,
then, to wear hair on his face? I shall presently go straight to the
barber's. I have been so proud of my manliness! But--repulsed with
loss! And, to make a clean breast of it, for an opportunity like this I
would gladly remain a foolish youth a long while yet; like silly Jack,
you know, in the fairy tale, who is always doing foolish things; but
the princess with the blue eyes does not think any the worse of him on
that account!"

Pricking up her ears and collecting her thoughts, she looked at me half
roguishly out of the corner of her eye; then she shook her head with
its heavy braids and said, "I do not understand you. You are so
comical. You must talk quite simply to me."

She looked so charmingly simple that I forgot my speech and watched her
standing there, so youthful and radiant in the window frame, against
the dark background of the room. Everything about her was healthful and
strong: her figure in the blue washable dress, her round throat, her
well formed face, in which eyes and teeth gleamed brightly; but the
abundance of her chestnut braids was so heavy that her neck seemed
hardly able to support them.

"What sort of follies did silly Jack commit?" she asked when I became
silent.

"I don't know myself; but when he came to woo the princess, and was
asked what present he had brought her, he pulled a handful of mud out
of his pocket and filled her white hands with it. She liked that so
well that she took him for her husband."

"A handful of mud! Such a dirty fellow! Did she marry him?"

"Yes, indeed! The other suitors had brought her jewels and crowns--she
had plently of those already. But with mud she would have been glad to
play, like other children, if the court ladies had allowed her to.
Therefore she now rejoiced in her childish heart, and she thought he
would certainly be the pleasantest husband for her."

"Yes, yes--the fact of the matter is, she was right."

Thus it began, and so it continued.

She was the daughter of a German cabinet-maker, who had developed his
business until he had a prosperous furniture factory. Two years before,
her mother had died, and since that time she had run the household with
the most complete devotion, in the way that she had learned, and as
befitted her single-minded, unsophisticated nature. She did all her
work as though it were a benefaction, with whole-souled joy and
boundless happiness in her abilit