All these he ordered to be stirred up together with a great
ivory spoon, till they made a kind of wonderful mud, and then he had the
bath filled up with scented water.
"'Now then,' he said to the queen, when he had brought her down to look
at it, 'you may take off your shoes and stockings and paddle about in
this mud as much as you like.' You may imagine that this was a very
pleasant kind of mud to dabble in, and the queen and her ladies amused
themselves with it immensely for some time. But nothing could keep this
tiresome queen amused for long together, and in about a fortnight she
had grown quite tired of her wonderful bath. It seemed as if the king's
pains had been all thrown away. She grew cross and discontented again,
and her ladies began to say to each other, 'What will she wish for next,
I wonder? The king might as well try to drink up the sea as try to get
her all she wants.' At last, one day, when she and her ladies were
walking near the palace, they met a shepherdess driving a flock of sheep
up into the hills. The shepherdess looked so pretty and bright in her
red petticoat and tall yellow cap, that the queen stopped to speak to
her.
"'Where are you going, pretty maiden, with your woolly white sheep?' she
asked.
"'I am going up to the hills,' said the shepherdess.
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