Page:The sleeping beauty and other fairy tales from the old French (1910).djvu/31

The Sleeping Beauty and this is just the sort of thing that happens in palaces.

'What are you doing, goody?' asked the Princess.

'I am spinning, pretty one,' answered the old woman, who did not know who she was.

'Spinning? What is that?'

'I wonder sometimes,' said the old woman, 'what the world is coming to, in these days!' And that, of course, was natural enough, and might occur to anybody after living so long as she had lived in a garret on the top of a tower. 'Spinning,' she said wisely, 'is spinning, or was; and, gentle or simple, no one is fit to keep house until she has learnt to spin.'

'But how pretty it is!' said the Princess. 'How do you do it? Give it to me and let me see if I can do so well.'

She had no sooner grasped the spindle—she was over-eager perhaps, or just a little bit clumsy, or maybe the fairy decree had so ordained it—than it pierced her hand and she dropped down in a swoon.

The old trot in a flurry ran to the head of the 9