A Double Story | Page 9

her to understand their grief
at having lost her, and not only a great longing to be back in her
comfortable home, but a feeble flutter of genuine love for her parents
awoke in her heart as well, and she burst into real tears--soft, mournful
tears--very different from those of rage and disappointment to which
she was so much used. And another very remarkable thing was that the
moment she began to love her father and mother, she began to wish to
see the wise woman again. The idea of her being an ogress vanished

utterly, and she thought of her only as one to take her in from the moon,
and the loneliness, and the terrors of the forest-haunted heath, and hide
her in a cottage with not even a door for the horrid wolves to howl
against.
But the old woman--as the princess called her, not knowing that her
real name was the Wise Woman--had told her that she must knock at
the door: how was she to do that when there was no door? But again
she bethought herself--that, if she could not do all she was told, she
could, at least, do a part of it: if she could not knock at the door, she
could at least knock--say on the wall, for there was nothing else to
knock upon--and perhaps the old woman would hear her, and lift her in
by some window. Thereupon, she rose at once to her feet, and picking
up a stone, began to knock on the wall with it. A loud noise was the
result, and she found she was knocking on the very door itself. For a
moment she feared the old woman would be offended, but the next,
there came a voice, saying,
"Who is there?"
The princess answered,
"Please, old woman, I did not mean to knock so loud."
To this there came no reply.
Then the princess knocked again, this time with her knuckles, and the
voice came again, saying,
"Who is there?"
And the princess answered,
"Rosamond."
Then a second time there was silence. But the princess soon ventured to
knock a third time.
"What do you want?" said the voice.

"Oh, please, let me in!" said the princess.
"The moon will keep staring at me; and I hear the wolves in the wood."
Then the door opened, and the princess entered. She looked all around,
but saw nothing of the wise woman.
It was a single bare little room, with a white deal table, and a few old
wooden chairs, a fire of fir-wood on the hearth, the smoke of which
smelt sweet, and a patch of thick-growing heath in one corner. Poor as
it was, compared to the grand place Rosamond had left, she felt no little
satisfaction as she shut the door, and looked around her. And what with
the sufferings and terrors she had left outside, the new kind of tears she
had shed, the love she had begun to feel for her parents, and the trust
she had begun to place in the wise woman, it seemed to her as if her
soul had grown larger of a sudden, and she had left the days of her
childishness and naughtiness far behind her. People are so ready to
think themselves changed when it is only their mood that is changed!
Those who are good-tempered because it is a fine day, will be
ill-tempered when it rains: their selves are just the same both days; only
in the one case, the fine weather has got into them, in the other the
rainy. Rosamond, as she sat warming herself by the glow of the
peat-fire, turning over in her mind all that had passed, and feeling how
pleasant the change in her feelings was, began by degrees to think how
very good she had grown, and how very good she was to have grown
good, and how extremely good she must always have been that she was
able to grow so very good as she now felt she had grown; and she
became so absorbed in her self-admiration as never to notice either that
the fire was dying, or that a heap of fir-cones lay in a corner near it.
Suddenly, a great wind came roaring down the chimney, and scattered
the ashes about the floor; a tremendous rain followed, and fell hissing
on the embers; the moon was swallowed up, and there was darkness all
about her. Then a flash of lightning, followed by a peal of thunder, so
terrified the princess, that she cried aloud for the old woman, but there
came no answer to her cry.
Then in her terror the princess grew angry, and saying to herself, "She
must be somewhere in the place, else who was there to open