One evening father-stork had been out for a long time, and when he came home he seemed excited and flurried. ‘I’ve dreadful news for you!’ he said to mother-stork. ‘Don’t get excited,’ said she. ‘Remember I’m sitting on my eggs, and I might be upset by it, and then the eggs would suffer.’ ‘You must know it!’ he answered. ‘She has come here, our landlord’s daughter in Egypt! She has ventured on the journey here, and she is lost!’ ‘Why, she is of fairy descent! Tell me all about it; you know I can’t bear to wait at this time, when I’m sitting.’ ‘Listen, mother. It’s as you told me. She has believed what the doctor said, that the moor-flowers here could do her sick father good, and so she has flown here in a feather-dress with the other winged princesses, who have to come to the north every year to bathe and renew their youth. She has come, and she is lost!’ ‘You’re getting too long-winded!’ said mother-stork. ‘The eggs may be chilled! I can’t bear to be excited!’ ‘I have watched,’ said father-stork, ‘and in the evening, when I went into the reeds, where the quagmire is able to bear me, there came three swans. Something in the way they flew told me, “Watch; that isn’t a real swan; it’s only swan feathers.” You know the feeling, mother, as well as I do; you can tell if it is right.’ ‘Yes, certainly,’ said she; ‘but tell me about the princess. I’m tired of hearing about the swan’s feathers.’ ‘Here, in the middle of the moor, you know,’ said father-stork, ‘is a kind of lake; you can see a part of it if you stand up. There, by the reeds and the green quagmire, lies a great elder-stump. The three swans lighted on it, flapped their wings, and looked round them. Then one of them threw off her swan’s plumage, and I saw it was our own princess, of our house in Egypt. Then she sat down, and she had no other covering than her own long, black hair. I heard her ask the two others to take great care of her swan-skin while she plunged under the water to gather a flower which she thought she saw. They nodded, and lifted up the loose feather-dress. “I wonder what they mean to do with it,” said I to myself; and no doubt she asked them the same. And she got an answer, something she could see for herself. They flew aloft with her feather-dress! “Sink down,” they cried; “you shall never fly in the swan-skin again; never see Egypt again! Stay in the moss!” And so they tore her feather-dress into a hundred pieces, till the feathers flew about as if it was snowing, and off flew the two good-for-nothing princesses.’ ‘Oh, how dreadful!’ said mother-stork. ‘I can’t bear to hear it. But, tell me, what else happened?’