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Updated: June 7, 2025
A crowd of Sea-children played about her, and seemed to be carrying away the cloud-like white knitting as fast as it flowed from her busy fingers. She bent her head towards Sidigunda, and nodded to her, without ceasing her work for a moment. "Come, Princess, and talk to me!" she called in a sweet, low voice. "Take your shoe off, and it will bring you here in a moment."
"If you said three hundred 'greats' you would be nearer the real thing," remarked the Crab-boy. "But come now, follow me, and we will start immediately." Princess Sidigunda got up, and taking the Crab-herd's hand, they set off down the road towards the mountains.
"Sink down at once," he continued; "you are over the city now," and with a wave of his hand he sailed away with the children, and was soon out of sight. "I suppose there's nothing else to be done," sighed Sidigunda, and throwing the scarf over her head, she poured a few drops from the bottle upon her shoe. "Turn into a fish and carry me down to the Sea-city!" she said.
Faster and faster it went, until the country seemed only a flying haze; and just as the Princess began to feel she could endure no more, it stopped abruptly before a small hut. Outside the door a boy sat on a stone seat, playing on a long horn whose notes echoed among the rocky hills that surrounded him. Princess Sidigunda looked at the boy with a friendly smile.
She lives in a cave, with plenty of space for her knitting." "Does she knit much?" enquired Sidigunda. "Yes; she knits and spins too. She never leaves off; and never has for hundreds and thousands of years." "What a very old lady she must be! Old enough to be a great-great-great-grandmother!" cried the Princess in astonishment.
"I have sent for your shoe, my child," she said. "Those tiresome grandchildren of mine give me a great deal of trouble. I can't keep my eyes on all of them at once, and so they are always in mischief!" Sidigunda looked up in the gentle face; and sat down confidingly beside the Sea-grandmother.
Princess Sidigunda was an only child, and at her christening every gift you can imagine had been showered upon her. The Trolls of the Woods gave her beauty; the Trolls of the Water, a free, bright spirit; the Mountain-Trolls, good health; and last, but not least, her chief Godfather, the Troll of the Seashore, had given her a beautiful little pair of golden slippers.
"Your name and business!" he enquired, in a high thin voice. "I am Princess Sidigunda, seeking my golden shoe, and I bring this from the Sea-Troll," said the Princess courageously. "Will you tell me where I am to find the Trolls of the Palace?" The fish handed the shell back sulkily, and pointed up the street.
"Go straight through till you come to the marble building with the pearls over the door," he said; and gave the Princess a poke with the handle of his sword, that pushed her through the gate, almost before she had time to draw on her golden shoe again. "What a rude, ill-bred sentry!" said Sidigunda.
Sidigunda did as she was told for the old lady spoke as if she were used to being obeyed without question and found herself floating upwards, until she alighted on a broad ledge right in front of the Sea-grandmother. "So you have come all this way to find your golden shoe?" the old lady said in her clear, even voice. "Sit down, and tell me all about it."
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