"But this poor wife," said the little girl, "who has to go so far over such bad ways, she may well be starving and suffering much other ill. I dare say she has far more need of this napkin than I;" and so she asked if she might have leave to give her the napkin, and she got it.
So the princess took the napkin and thanked them, and set off again far and farther than far, away through the same murk wood all that day and night, and in the morning she came to a cross-fell, which was as steep as a wall, and so high and broad, she could see no end to it. There was a hut there, too; and as soon as she set her foot inside it, she said—
"Good-day! have you seen if King Valemon, the white bear, has passed this way?"
"Good-day to you," said the old wife. "It was you, maybe, who was to have him?"
"Yes, it was."
"Well, he passed by and went up over the hill three days ago; but up that nothing can get that is wingless."
That hut, you must know, was all so full of small bairns, and they all hung round their mother's skirt and bawled for food. Then the goody put a pot on the fire full of small round pebbles. When the princess asked what that was for, the goody said they were so poor they had neither food nor clothing, and it went to her heart to hear the children screaming for a morsel of food; but when she put the pot on the fire, and said—
"The potatoes will soon be ready," the words dulled their hunger, and they were patient awhile.
