as tidy as might be, and ran to the hole in the wall: there was a huge basin of bread and milk!
Never had she eaten anything with half the relish! Alas! however, when she had finished, she did not wash the basin, but left it as it was, revealing how entirely all the rest had been done only from hunger. Then she threw herself on the heather, and was fast asleep in a moment. Never an evil bird came near her all that night, nor had she so much as one troubled dream.
In the morning as she lay awake before getting up, she spied what seemed a door behind the tall eight-day clock that stood silent in the corner.
“Ah!” she thought, “that must be the way out!” and got up instantly. The first thing she did, however, was to go to the hole in the wall. Nothing was there.
“Well, I am hardly used!” she cried aloud. “All that cleaning for the cross old woman yesterday, and this for my trouble—nothing for breakfast! Not even a crust of bread! Does Mistress Ogress fancy a princess will bear that?”
The poor foolish creature seemed to think that the work of one day ought to serve for the next day too! But that is nowhere the way in the whole universe. How could there be a universe in that case? And even she never dreamed of applying the same rule to her breakfast.
“How good I was all yesterday!” she said, “and how hungry and ill used I am today!”
But she would not be a slave, and do over again today what she had done only last night! She didn’t care about her breakfast! She might have it no doubt if she dusted all the wretched place again, but she was not going to do that—at least, without seeing first what lay behind the clock!