The Wise Woman | Page 6

naughty, they have to be frightened, and they are not expected
to like it. The princess grew angry, pulled her hand away, and cried,--
"You are the ugly old woman. I hate you."
Therewith she stood still, expecting the wise woman to stop also,
perhaps coax her to go on: if she did, she was determined not to move a
step. But the wise woman never even looked about; she kept walking
on steadily, the same pace as before. Little Obstinate thought for certain
she would turn, for she regarded herself as much too precious to be left
behind; but on and on the wise woman went, until she had vanished
away in the dim moonlight. Then all at once the princess perceived that
she was left alone with the moon--looking down on her from the height
of her loneliness. She was horribly frightened, and began to run after
the wise woman, calling aloud. But the song she had just heard came
back to the sound of her own running feet--
All all alone
Like a dog-picked bone!
and again,
She might call and shout,
And no one about
Would ever call back--Who's there?
and she screamed as she ran. How she wished she knew the old

woman's name, that she might call it after her through the moonlight!
But the wise woman had in truth heard the first sound of her running
feet, and stopped and turned, waiting. What with running and crying,
however, and a fall or two as she ran, the princess never saw her until
she fell right into her arms--and the same moment into a fresh rage; for
as soon as any trouble was over, the princess was always ready to begin
another. The wise woman therefore pushed her away, and walked on,
while the princess ran scolding and storming after her. She had to run
till, from very fatigue, her rudeness ceased. Her heart gave way, she
burst into tears, and ran on silently weeping.
A minute more and the wise woman stooped, and lifting her in her arms,
folded her cloak around her. Instantly she fell asleep, and slept as soft
and as soundly as if she had been in her own bed. She slept till the
moon went down; she slept till the sun rose up; she slept till he climbed
the topmost sky; she slept till he went down again, and the poor old
moon came peaking and peering out once more; and all that time the
wise woman went walking on and on very fast. And now they had
reached a spot where a few fir-trees came to meet them through the
moonlight.
At the same time the princess awaked, and popping her head out
between the folds of the wise woman's cloak--a very ugly little owlet
she looked--saw that they were entering the wood. Now there is
something awful about every wood, especially in the moonlight, and
perhaps a fir-wood is more awful than other woods: for one thing, it
lets a little more light through, rendering the darkness a little more
visible, as it were; and then the trees go stretching away up towards the
moon, and look as if they cared nothing about the creatures below
them--not like the broad trees with soft wide leaves that, in the
darkness even, look sheltering. So the princess is not to be blamed that
she was very much frightened. She is hardly to be blamed either that,
assured the wise woman was an ogress carrying her to her castle to eat
her up, she began again to kick and scream violently, as those of my
readers who are of the same sort as herself, will consider the right and
natural thing to do. The wrong in her was this--that she had led such a

bad life, that she did not know a good woman when she saw her--took
her for one like herself, even after she had slept in her arms.
Immediately the wise woman set her down, and, walking on, within a
few paces vanished among the trees. Then the cries of the princess rent
the air, but the fir-trees never heeded her; not one of their hard little
needles gave a single shiver for all the noise she made. But there were
creatures in the forest who were soon quite as much interested in her
cries as the fir-trees were indifferent to them. They began to harken and
howl and snuff about, and run hither and thither, and grin with their
white teeth, and light up the green lamps in their eyes. In a minute or
two a whole army of wolves and hy¾nas were rushing from all quarters
through the pillar-like stems of the fir-trees, to the place where she
stood calling them without knowing it. The noise she