Then she put her elbows on the table, laid her face in her two hands, and cried, “Is there no one, then, on God’s earth to have pity on me?”

Then she heard a low voice which said, “Be comforted, my child, I have come to help thee.” The maiden looked up, and an old woman was by her side. She took the girl kindly by the hand, and said, “Only tell me what is troubling thee.” As she spoke so kindly, the girl told her of her miserable life, and how one burden after another was laid upon her, and she never could get to the end of the work which was given to her.

“If I have not done these feathers by this evening, my stepmother will beat me; she has threatened she will, and I know she keeps her word.”