“I must watch o’ nights—perhaps she is kept in prison in the tower above the kitchen, and at night those who watch her may sleep, and so I shall be able to talk to her.”
So he dressed in dark clothes and hid in the shadow of the palace courtyard and watched all one night. And he saw nothing. But in the early morning, when the setting moon and the rising sun were mixing their lights in the sky, he heard a heavy bolt shot back, and the door of the kitchen tower opened slowly. The Prince crouched behind a buttress and watched, and he saw the fair maid with the bright hair under the red kerchief. She swept the doorstep, and she drew water from the well in the middle of the courtyard; and presently he crept to the kitchen window and saw her light the fire and wash the dishes, and make all neat and clean within. And the Prince’s eyes followed her in all she did, and the more he looked at her the more he loved her. And at last he heard sounds as of folks stirring above, so he crept away, keeping close to the wall, and so back to his own rooms. And this he did again on the next morning, and on the next. And on the third morning, as he stood looking through the window at the girl with the bright hair and the bright kerchief, the gold chain he wore clinked against the stone of the window-sill. The maid started, and the bowl she held dropped on to the brick floor of the kitchen and broke into twenty pieces; and then and there she sat down on the floor beside it, and began to cry bitterly.
“Don’t cry, dear,” he said, “I’ll get you another bowl.”
“It isn’t that,” she sobbed, “but now they’ll send me away.”
“The noble Kitchen-Maids. They keep me to do the work because, being Kings’ daughters, they don’t know how to do anything; but the Queen doesn’t know that there is a Real Kitchen-maid here, and now you have found out they will send me away.”
“Then you are a Real Kitchen-maid, and not noble at all?” said the Prince.
She stopped crying for a minute to say “No.”
“Never mind,” said the Prince. “You are twice as pretty as all the Kings’ daughters put together and twenty times as dear.”
At that she stopped crying for good and all, and looked up at him from the floor where she sat.
“Yes you are,” he said, “and I love you with all my heart.”