Page:Popular tales from the Norse (1912).djvu/511

 Rh right in the midst of her forehead, and every time she spoke ashes were to fall out of her mouth.

So when she got home with her buckets, she bawled but to her mother—

"Open the door."

"Open it yourself, my darling child," said the mother.

"I can't reach it because of my nose," said the daughter.

So when the mother came out and saw her, you may fancy what a way she was in, and how she screamed and groaned; but, for all that, there were the nose and the snout and the pine-bush, and they got no smaller for all her grief.

Now the brother, who had got the place in the King's stable, had taken a little sketch of his sister, which he carried away with him, and every morning and every evening he knelt down before the picture and prayed to Our Lord for his sister, whom he loved so dearly. The other grooms had heard him praying, so they peeped through the key-hole of his room, and there they saw him on his knees before the picture. So they went about saying how the lad every morning and every evening knelt down and prayed to an idol which he had, and at last they went to the King himself and begged him only to peep through the key-hole, and then his Majesty would see the lad, and what things he did. At first the King wouldn't believe it, but at last they talked him over, and he crept on tiptoe to the door and peeped in. Yes, there was the lad on his knees before the picture, which hung on the wall, praying with clasped hands.

"Open the door!" called out the King; but the lad didn't hear him.