Page:Legends of Rubezahl, and Other Tales (1845).djvu/244

 might under such adverse circumstances, and whom, in honour of her chaste hostess, she named Lucretia. But notwithstanding this piece of politeness, the lady in the straw was restricted to such a very miserable dietary, that the strongest dishes the grooms in her castle used to regale on would now have seemed perfectly Sardinapalian delicacies; she got nothing but cabbage soup, without butter, or even salt, and black bread, which the old woman cut in slices as thin as a wafer. This Lent provender did not at all satisfy the young mother, who had a first-rate appetite, and conceived a great desire for something solid: a mutton chop, or a steak, or a roast fowl; and this last wish really did not seem so impracticable, for every morning she heard a hen announce, by the usual cackle, that she had laid an egg.

For the first nine days she submitted in silence to the meagre diet which her hostess inflicted; on the tenth she threw out a gentle hint touching a little chicken broth. The old lady turning a deaf ear to this, she at length spoke out: “Good Madam,” said she, “your soups are so poor and so sour, and your bread so hard, that altogether they make my gums sore. Do pray give me something more nourishing; I’ll pay you well for it. There’s the hen, which makes such a noise in the house: roast that for me, that I may get up the strength necessary to