So after the laundry-maid had his money in her apron as they went
merrily along, she stopt, exclaiming: "My clothes are left outside, I
must run back and bring them in." "Stop for me while I go; it is a cold
frost night," said William, "you'd be catching your death." So the girl
waited long enough to take her feathers out and say, "By virtue of my
three feathers may the clothes slash and blow about till morning, and
may William not be able to take his hand from them nor yet to gather
them up." And then she was away to bed and to sleep.
The coachman did not want to be every one's jest, and he said nothing.
So after a bit the footman comes to her and said he: "I have been with
my master for years and have saved up a good bit, and you have been
three years here, and must have saved up as well. Let us put it
together, and make us a home or else stay on at service as pleases you."
Well, she got him to bring the savings to her as the others had, and
then she pretended she was faint, and said to him: "James, I feel so
queer, run down cellar for me, that's a dear, and fetch me up a drop of
brandy." Now no sooner had he started than she said: "By virtue of my
three feathers may there be slashing and spilling, and James not be able
to pour the brandy straight nor yet to take his hand from it until
morning."
And so it was. Try as he might James could not get his glass filled, and
there was slashing and spilling, and right on it all, down came the
master to know what it meant!
So James told him he could not make it out, but he could not get the
drop of brandy the laundry-maid had asked for, and his hand would shake
and spill everything, and yet come away he could not.
This got him in for a regular scrape, and the master when he got back to
his wife said: "What has come over the men, they were all right until
that laundry-maid of yours came. Something is up now though. They have
all drawn out their pay, and yet they don't leave, and what can it be
anyway?"
But his wife said she could not hear of the laundry-maid being blamed,
for she was the best servant she had and worth all the rest put
together.
So it went on until one day as the girl stood in the hall door, the
coachman happened to say to the footman: "Do you know how that girl
served me, James?" And then William told about the clothes. The butler
put in, "That was nothing to what she served me," and he told of the
shutters clapping all night.
Just then the master came through the hall, and the girl said: "By
virtue of my three feathers may there be slashing and striving between
master and men, and may all get splashed in the pond."
And so it was, the men fell to disputing which had suffered the most by
her, and when the master came up all would be heard at once and none
listened to him, and it came to blows all round, and the first they knew
they had shoved one another into the pond.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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