“It’s Me”
They had chatted so long about the lasses down in the valley; and what a fine time they had of it there, that Gygra’s43 daughter grew sick and tired of it all, and began to heave rocks against the mountain side. She was bent upon taking service in the valley below, said she.
“Then go down to the ground gnome first, and grind thy nose down, and tidy thyself up a bit, and stick a comb in thy hair instead of an iron rake,” said the dwellers in the mountains.
So Gygra’s daughter tramped along in the middle of the river, till the foss steamed and the storm whirled round about her. Down she went to the ground gnome, and was scoured and scrubbed and combed out finely.
One evening a large-limbed coarse-grained wench stepped into the general-dealer’s kitchen, and asked if she could be taken into service.
“You must be cook, then,” said Madame.44 It seemed to her that the wench was one who would stir the porridge finely, and would make no bones about a little extra wood-chopping and tub-washing. So they took her on.
She was a roughish colt, and her ways were roughish too. The first time she carried in a load of wood, she shoved so violently against the kitchen door that she burst its hinges. And however many times the carpenter might mend the door, it always remained hingeless, for she burst it open with her foot every time she brought in wood.
When she washed up, too, heaps and heaps of pots and pans were piled up higgledy-piggledy from meal to meal, so that the kitchen shelves and tables could hold no more, and bustle about as she might, they never seemed to grow less.
Nor had her mistress a much better opinion of her scouring.
When Toad, for so they called her, set to work with the sand-brush, and scrubbed with all her might, the wooden, tin, and pewter vessels would no doubt have looked downright bonny if they hadn’t broken to bits beneath her hands. And when her mistress tried to show her how it ought to be done, she only gasped and gaped.
Such sets of cracked cups, and such rows of chipped and handleless jugs and dishes, had never before been seen in that kitchen.
And then, too, she ate as much as all the other servants put together.
So her mistress complained to her master, and said that the sooner they were well quit of her the better.
Out into the kitchen went the general dealer straightway. He was quite red in the face, and flung open the kitchen-door till it creaked again. He would let her know, he said, that she was not there to only stand with her back to the fire and warm her dirty self.
Now when he saw the lazy sluttish beast lounging over the kitchen bench and doing nothing but gape through the windowpanes at his boats, which lay down by the bridge laden with train-oil, he was downright furious. “Pack yourself off this instant!” said he.
But Toad showed her teeth, and grinned and blinked up at him, and said that as master himself had come into the kitchen, he should see that she did not eat his bread for nothing.
Then she slouched down to the boats, and snorted back at him with her arm before her face. Before anyone could guess what she was after, she had one of the heavy hogsheads of train-oil on her back.
And back she came through the kitchen door, all smirking and smiling, and begged father to be so good as to tell her where she was to put it.
He simply stood and gaped at her. Such a thing he had never seen before.
And hogshead after hogshead she carried from the boat right up into the shop.
The general dealer laughed till he quite gasped for breath, and slapped his thighs so far as his big belly would let him reach them.
Nor was he sparing of compliments.
And into the dwelling-room he rushed almost as quickly as he had rushed out of it.
“Mother has no idea what a capital wench she has got,” said he.
But, ever after that, she put her hand to nothing, nay, not so much as to drive a wooden peg into the wall, and
