Page:The Pentamerone, or The Story of Stories.djvu/164

138 reward for your pains—every deed deserves its meed; and if I don't cut off your nose, it is only that you may smell the bad odour of your reputation." So saying she went her way home with a hop, skip and jump, leaving her aunt eased of her car, and the prince full of Let-me-alone.

Not long afterwards the prince again passed by the house of Violet's father, and seeing her at the window where she was used to stand, he began to his old tune, "Good day, good day, Violet!" whereupon she answered as quickly as a good parish-clerk, "Good day, king's son! I know more than you." But Violet's sisters could no longer bear this behaviour, and they plotted together how to get rid of her. Now one of the windows looked into the garden of an ogre; so they proposed to drive the poor girl away through this; and letting fall from it a skein of thread, with which they were working a door-curtain for the queen, they cried, "Alas, alas! we are ruined and undone, and shall not be able to finish the work in time, if Violet, who is the smallest and lightest of us, does not let herself down by a cord and pick up the thread that has fallen."

Violet could not bear to see her sisters grieving thus, and instantly offered to go down; so tying a cord to