But he only frowned and told her to be silent; while the servants laughed and said, "Tattercoats is happy in her rags, playing with the gooseherd! Let her be--it is all she is fit for." A second, and then a third time, the old nurse begged him to let the girl go with him, but she was answered only by black looks and fierce words, till she was driven from the room by the jeering servants, with blows and mocking words. Weeping over her ill-success, the old nurse went to look for Tattercoats; but the girl had been turned from the door by the cook, and had run away to tell her friend the gooseherd how unhappy she was because she could not go to the King's ball. Now when the gooseherd had listened to her story, he bade her cheer up, and proposed that they should go together into the town to see the King, and all the fine things; and when she looked sorrowfully down at her rags and bare feet he played a note or two upon his pipe, so gay and merry, that she forgot all about her tears and her troubles, and before she well knew, the gooseherd had taken her by the hand, and she and he, and the geese before them, were dancing down the road towards the town. "Even cripples can dance when they choose," said the gooseherd. Before they had gone very far a handsome young man, splendidly dressed, riding up, stopped to ask the way to the castle where the King was staying, and when he found that they too were going thither, he got off his horse and walked beside them along the road. "You seem merry folk," he said, "and will be good company." "Good company, indeed," said the gooseherd, and played a new tune that was not a dance. It was a curious tune, and it made the strange young man stare and stare and stare at Tattercoats till he couldn't see her rags--till he couldn't, to tell the truth, see anything but her beautiful face. Then he said, "You are the most beautiful maiden in the world. Will you marry me?" Then the gooseherd smiled to himself, and played sweeter than ever. But Tattercoats laughed. "Not I," said she; "you would be finely put to shame, and so would I be, if you took a goose-girl for your wife! Go and ask one of the great ladies you will see to-night at the King's ball, and do not flout poor Tattercoats." But the more she refused him the sweeter the pipe played, and the deeper the young man fell in love; till at last he begged her to come that night at twelve to the King's ball, just as she was, with the gooseherd and his geese, in her torn petticoat and bare feet, and see if he wouldn't dance with her before the King and the lords and ladies, and present her to them all, as his dear and honoured bride. [Illustration: Tattercoats dancing while the gooseherd pipes] Now at first Tattercoats said she would not; but the gooseherd said, "Take fortune when it comes, little one."