from the palace without being seen by anyone.

Directly she was missed there was a great hue and cry, and every
corner, possible and impossible, was searched. Then the king sent
out parties along all the roads, but the fairy threw her
invisible mantle over the girl when they approached, and none of
them could see her.

The princess walked on a long, long way, trying to find some one
who would take her in, and let her work for them; but though the
cottagers, whose houses she passed, gave her food from charity,
the ass's skin was so dirty they would not allow her to enter
their houses. For her flight had been so hurried she had had no
time to clean it.

Tired and disheartened at her ill-fortune, she was wandering, one
day, past the gate of a farmyard, situated just outside the walls
of a large town, when she heard a voice calling to her. She
turned and saw the farmer's wife standing among her turkeys, and
making signs to her to come in.

‘I want a girl to wash the dishes and feed the turkeys, and clean
out the pig-sty,' said the w omen, ‘and, to judge by your dirty
clothes, you would not be too fine for the work.'

The girl accepted her offer with joy, and she was at once set to
work in a corner of the kitchen, where all the farm servants came
and made fun of her, and the ass's skin in which she was wrapped.
But by-and-by they got so used to the sight of it that it ceased
to amuse them, and she worked so hard and so well, that her