Page:Popular tales from the Norse (1912).djvu/380

194 learnt nothing here but how to pluck birds and roast them, but still you may as well try to earn your bread." So the girl went off to seek a place, and when she had gone a little while, she came to a palace. There she stayed and got a place, and the queen liked her so well that all the other maids got envious of her. So they made up their minds to tell the queen how the lassie said she was good to spin a pound of flax in four-and-twenty hours, for you must know the queen was a great housewife, and thought much of good work. "Have you said this? then you shall do it," said the queen; "but you may have a little longer time if you choose." Now, the poor lassie dared not say she had never spun in all her life, but she only begged for a room to herself. That she got, and the wheel and the flax were brought up to her. There she sat sad and weeping, and knew not how to help herself. She pulled the wheel this way and that, and twisted and turned it about, but she made a poor hand of it, for she had never even seen a spinning-wheel in her life. But all at once, as she sat there, in came an old woman to her. "What ails you, child?" she said. "Ah!" said the lassie, with a deep sigh, "it's no good to tell you, for you'll never be able to help me." "Who knows?" said the old wife. "Maybe I know how to help you after all"

Well, thought the lassie to herself, I may as well tell her, and so she told her how her fellow-servants had given out that she was good to spin a pound of flax in four-and-twenty hours.