and when the maids came home she was pretending to be asleep with her
cap o' rushes on.

Well, next day they says to her, "There, Cap o' Rushes, you didn't
come last night, and now you won't see the lady, for there's no more
dances."

"Well I should have rarely liked to have seen her," says she.

The master's son he tried every way to find out where the lady was
gone, but go where he might, and ask whom he might, he never heard
anything about her. And he got worse and worse for the love of her
till he had to keep his bed.

"Make some gruel for the young master," they said to the cook. "He's
dying for the love of the lady." The cook she set about making it when
Cap o' Rushes came in.

"What are you a-doing of?", says she.

"I'm going to make some gruel for the young master," says the cook,
"for he's dying for love of the lady."

"Let me make it," says Cap o' Rushes.

Well, the cook wouldn't at first, but at last she said yes, and Cap o'
Rushes made the gruel. And when she had made it she slipped the ring
into it on the sly before the cook took it upstairs.

The young man he drank it and then he saw the ring at the bottom.