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142 sill. The maid started, and the bowl she held dropped on to the brick floor of the kitchen and broke into twenty pieces; and then and there she sat down on the floor beside it, and began to cry bitterly.

The Prince ran in and knelt beside her.

“Don’t cry, dear,” he said, “I’ll get you another bowl.”

“It isn’t that,” she sobbed, “but now they’ll send me away.”

“Who will?”

“The noble Kitchen-Maids. They keep me to do the work because, being Kings’ daughters, they don’t know how to do anything; but the Queen doesn’t know that there is a Real Kitchen-maid here, and now you have found out they will send me away.”

And she went on crying.

“Then you are a Real Kitchen-maid, and not noble at all?” said the Prince.

She stopped crying for a minute to say “No.”

“Never mind,” said the Prince. “You are twice as pretty as all the Kings’ daughters put together and twenty times as dear.”

At that she stopped crying for good and all, and looked up at him from the floor where she sat.