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always did her bidding; but instead this goose girl wept every day

because she longed to marry a certain lord who lived in a gray stone

castle at the top of a high hill. All day long she sat looking at this

castle, and her eyes could see nothing else for admiration of it. She

dreamed dreams a hundred times a day, in which she married the lord,

and was cross with her geese because she had to tend them.



Now when the lord of the castle went riding by the green meadow, this

silly goose girl would run after the carriage, shouting his name and

throwing bouquets of wild flowers to him. But alas! The carriage always

whirled by so quickly that the lord heard her not, and the bouquets of

wild flowers fell in the dust by the roadside. Each time the goose girl

wept and threw sticks at her geese because she had been disappointed,

until they fled to shelter.



"It is the stupid coachman's fault," said the goose girl to herself one

day, after she had chased the carriage for a long distance. "My lord is

within, of course, and cannot hear me, for the windows of glass shut out

all sound." She knew that maidens often wrote letters when they were

unable to obtain speech with those whom they fancied, and she resolved

to write to the lord of the gray stone castle.



She spent her year's earnings on some pink paper with red hearts

lovingly entwined on the border, and that her letter might be colorful

and splendid, she bought also some purple ink. Then the goose girl sat

before a flat rock and strove to compose such a letter to the lord that

he would stop his carriage the next time he rode by the meadow.



"The first day he will ask me to ride with him, and the second day he

will ask me to wed him," thought the goose girl, as she sat gazing at

the gray stone castle. "The third day I shall ride with him a bride to

yonder castle, where I shall dwell forevermore and have naught to do

with geese but to eat them roasted!"



Her geese, thinking perhaps she had spread on the rock something fine to

eat, crowded about her, but she drove them off. They bothered her, and

she wished to give her mind to the letter. One large blue gander

remained near, in spite of her angry motions and cross words. The goose

girl was about to begin her letter when she remembered that she had

brought no pen.



"Ah me! What shall I do?" she cried. "I shall have no more earnings for

another year, and by that time my lord may be wed to some fair maiden,

and I will surely die of a broken heart!" She covered her face and wept

aloud at her misfortune. Suddenly she began to laugh instead.



"Oh, that I should be so foolish!" she exclaimed. "Here waiting my hand

I have a hundred pens." She seized the large blue gander and plucked a

fine quill from under his wing, but no sooner had she done so than the

bird began to speak.



"That is not right," declared the gander. "You have taken what belongs

not to you but to me. Put back my quill, or I shall be vexed."



"And who is there to care?" replied the goose girl rudely. "When I have

written a letter to my lord of the gray stone castle, you shall have

your quill and not before."



She began to speak her thoughts aloud, as goose girls often do, and

started once more to compose the letter. "To my dearest lord of the gray

stone castle, whom I love with all my heart, but who whirls past me as I

sit tending geese in the meadow," she planned to write, and dipped the

quill in the purple ink. To her dismay the pen wrote not at all as she

planned, but seemed possessed of a spirit to go of itself. It wrote

with a remarkable flourish:



"Dear gander!"



But the goose girl pulled it from the paper before it could write more.



"What manner of pen is this?" she cried in vexation.



"It is not your quill," said the blue gander. "I am its master, and it

will write letters to none but me."



"Well, upon my word!" declared the goose girl. "You are the most forward

creature I have yet seen, and this is what you will get." She took a

long branch and beat the gander until he hid from sight in the bushes.

Then again she strove to write her letter, but again the pen was

possessed of a spirit of mischief.



"Oh! Oh!" wept the goose girl, "I have spent all my earnings on splendid

pink paper with red hearts lovingly entwined on the border, and purple

ink I bought also that my letter might be fine as a valentine. But,

alas! I am bothered with a stubborn quill that will not write as I

think. If I write not my letter to my lord, he will never know of me.

Then he will never marry me, and I shall dwell forever in my wretched

hut instead of the gray stone castle, as I have desired."



"You weep because you cannot marry the lord who lives in yonder gray

stone castle," said the blue gander, poking his long neck from the

bushes where he had fled. "Let me give you some advice. A wretched hut

is not a pleasant place, 'tis true, but your manners suit it better than

the castle of your dreams."



"Hold your tongue, forward bird!" screamed the goose girl in anger. She

seized a clod of earth and hurled it with such force that had it struck

the gander, he would have fallen flat in his tracks; but luck was with

him, and he dodged.



The next day and the next day after that the goose girl sat down to

write before the flat rock in the meadow; but the quill was stubborn as

ever. She spoiled all but one sheet of the precious pink paper. Then

once more the blue gander spoke to the goose girl.



"You have spoiled many sheets of your precious pink paper," said the

gander, nodding his head and cocking his eye in the wisest sort of way.

"Why will you not let the quill write a letter to me,--if only to see

what will happen?"

"But then I shall have no more paper on which to write to my lord, and I

shall dwell forever in my wretched hut instead of the castle of my

dreams," answered the goose girl.



"Mayhap there might be a betwixt and between," remarked the gander

sagely. "Write the letter and hand it to me with a bow."



So at last, after much thought, the goose girl did as the blue gander

bade. She dipped the quill in the purple ink, and immediately it touched

the paper it began to write such a marvelous letter as never before was

seen or read! It called the blue gander all manner of tender names and

vowed he was handsome and knowing. At the end, this remarkable quill

wrote the goose girl's name with a flourish so fine that she was pleased

in spite of herself. She folded the letter and handed it to the gander

with a bow.



No sooner had she done this than the blue gander spread his wings and

flew away in the clouds, and in his place stood a handsome shepherd lad

dressed in blue corduroys. He had a hundred sheep in the fold that

followed him, and in his hand a bag of silver.



"Dearest Goose Girl, wilt be mine?" asked he. "Yonder is my cottage,

where I am sure we shall be very happy."



The goose girl was amazed at the change. But so handsome was this young

shepherd lad, and so winning of speech and manner, that all thoughts of

the gray stone castle and the lord tumbled out of her head. She gazed

with delight at the little cottage to which the shepherd lad pointed.

Blue smoke was curling from its chimney, and a bluebird was singing in a

cage beside the kitchen door.



"We shall be married at once, shepherd lad of my heart," she answered

him sweetly, "and I shall make you griddlecakes for your supper."



So the goose girl and the shepherd were married and went to live in the

little cottage. Indeed, for all that I know, there they may be living to

this day, for I have met no one who has ever told me of the death of

either.