Gudgekin the Thistle Girl Read Free

simpleton! As soon as she was changed back from simple Rosemarie, she remembered everything and wouldn’t touch a thistle with an iron glove. Neither would she help her stepmother now, on account of all the woman’s cruelty before, nor would she do anything under heaven that might be pleasing to the prince, for she considered him cold-hearted and inconsiderate. The stepmother went back to the palace empty-handed, weeping and moaning and making a hundred excuses, but the scales had now fallen from the prince’s eyes—his reputation for shrewdness was in fact well founded—and after talking with his friends and advisers, he threw her in the dungeon. In less than a week her life in the dungeon was so miserable it made her repent and become a good woman, and the prince released her. “Hold your head high,” he said, brushing a tear from his eye, for she made him think of Gudgekin. “People may speak of you as someone who’s been in prison, but you’re a better person now than before.” She blessed him and thanked him and went her way.
    Then once more he advertised far and wide through the kingdom, begging the real Gudgekin to forgive him and come to the palace.
    â€œNever!” thought Gudgekin bitterly, for the fairy queen had taught her the importance of self-respect, and the prince’s offense still rankled.
    The prince mused and waited, and he began to feel a little hurt himself. He was a prince, after all, handsome and famous for his subtlety and shrewdness, and she was a mere thistle girl. Yet for all his beloved Gudgekin cared, he might as well have been born in some filthy cattle shed! At last he understood how things were, and the truth amazed him.
    Now word went far and wide through the kingdom that the handsome prince had fallen ill for sorrow and was lying in his bed, near death’s door. When the queen of the fairies heard the dreadful news, she was dismayed and wept tears of remorse, for it was all, she imagined, her fault. She threw herself down on the ground and began wailing, and all the fairies everywhere began at once to wail with her, rolling on the ground, for it seemed that she would die. And one of them, it happened, was living among the flowerpots in the bedroom of cruel little Gudgekin.
    When Gudgekin heard the tiny forlorn voice wailing, she hunted through the flowers and found the fairy and said, “What in heaven’s name is the matter, little friend?”
    â€œAh, dear Gudgekin,” wailed the fairy, “our queen is dying, and if she dies we will all die of sympathy, and that will be that.”
    â€œOh, you mustn’t!” cried Gudgekin, and tears filled her eyes. “Take me to the queen at once, little friend, for she did a favor for me and I see I must return it if I possibly can!”
    When they came to the queen of the fairies, the queen said, “Nothing will save me except possibly this, my dear: ride with me one last time in the gossamer chariot for a visit to the prince.”
    â€œNever!” said Gudgekin, but seeing the heartbroken looks of the fairies, she instantly relented.
    The chariot was brought out from its secret place, and the gossamer horse was hitched to it to give it more dignity, and along they went skimming like wind until they had arrived at the dim and gloomy sickroom. The prince lay on his bed so pale of cheek and so horribly disheveled that Gudgekin didn’t know him. If he seemed to her a stranger it was hardly surprising; he’d lost all signs of his princeliness and lay there with his nightcap on sideways and he even had his shoes on.
    â€œWhat’s this?” whispered Gudgekin. “What’s happened to the music and dancing and the smiling courtiers? And where is the prince?”
    â€œWoe is me,” said the ghastly white figure on the bed. “I was once that proud, shrewd prince you know, and this is what’s become of me. For I hurt the feelings of the