It does us all good to unbend sometimes. This
good woman was made happy all the day long by the applauses she got
out of herself for her magnanimous condescension to a tramp; and the
king was just as self-complacent over his gracious humility toward a
humble peasant woman.
When breakfast was over, the housewife told the king to wash up
the dishes. This command was a staggerer for a moment, and the king
came near rebelling; but then he said to himself, 'Alfred the Great
watched the cakes; doubtless he would have washed the dishes, too-
therefore will I essay it.'
He made a sufficiently poor job of it; and to his surprise, too,
for the cleaning of wooden spoons and trenchers had seemed an easy
thing to do. It was a tedious and troublesome piece of work, but he
finished it at last. He was becoming impatient to get away on his
journey now; however he was not to lose this thrifty dame's society so
easily. She furnished him some little odds and ends of employment,
which he got through with after a fair fashion and with some credit.
Then she set him and the little girls to paring some winter apples;
but he was so awkward at this service that she retired him from it and
gave him a butcher-knife to grind. Afterward she kept him carding wool
until he began to think he had laid the good King Alfred about far
enough in the shade for the present, in the matter of showy menial
heroisms that would read picturesquely in story-books and histories,
and so he was half minded to resign.
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