She heard the voice no more.  Then, suddenly startled at the thought of being alone, she looked hastily over her shoulder.  The cottage was indeed empty of all visible life.  It was soundless, too:  there was not even a ticking clock or a flapping flame.  The fire burned still and smouldering-wise; but it was all the company she had, and she turned again to stare into it.

Soon she began to grow weary of having nothing to do.  Then she remembered that the old woman, as she called her, had told her to keep the house tidy.

“The miserable little pig-sty!” she said.  “Where’s the use of keeping such a hovel clean!”

But in truth she would have been glad of the employment, only just because she had been told to do it, she was unwilling; for there are people—­however unlikely it may seem—­who object to doing a thing for no other reason than that it is required of them.

“I am a princess,” she said, “and it is very improper to ask me to do such a thing.”

She might have judged it quite as suitable for a princess to sweep away the dust as to sit the centre of a world of dirt.  But just because she ought, she wouldn’t.  Perhaps she feared that if she gave in to doing her duty once, she might have to do it always—­which was true enough—­for that was the very thing for which she had been specially born.

Unable, however, to feel quite comfortable in the resolve to neglect it, she said to herself, “I’m sure there’s time enough for such a nasty job as that!” and sat on, watching the fire as it burned away, the glowing red casting off white flakes, and sinking lower and lower on the hearth.

By and by, merely for want of something to do, she would see what the old woman had left for her in the hole of the wall.  But when she put in her hand she found nothing there, except the dust which she ought by this time to have wiped away.  Never reflecting that the wise woman had told her she would find food there when she was hungry, she flew into one of her furies, calling her a cheat, and a thief, and a liar, and an ugly old witch, and an ogress, and I do not know how many wicked names besides.  She raged until she was quite exhausted, and then fell fast asleep on her chair.  When she awoke the fire was out.

By this time she was hungry; but without looking in the hole, she began again to storm at the wise woman, in which labor she would no doubt have once more exhausted herself, had not something white caught her eye:  it was the corner of a napkin hanging from the hole in the wall.  She bounded to it, and there was a dinner for her of something strangely good—­one of her favorite dishes, only better than she had ever tasted it before.  This might surely have at least changed her mood towards the wise woman; but she only grumbled to herself that it was as it ought to be, ate up the food, and lay down on the bed, never thinking of fire, or dust, or water for the heather.