Explore "A Double Story" by George MacDonald on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
The soldiers sent out by the king, had no great difficulty in finding / Agnes's father and mother, of whom they demanded if they knew any thing / of such a young princess as they described. The honest pair told them / the truth in every point-that, having lost their own child and found / another, they had taken her home, and treated her as their own; that / she had indeed called herself a princess, but they had not believed / her, because she did not look like one; that, even if they had, they / did not know how they could have done differently, seeing they were / poor people, who could not afford to keep any idle person about the / place; that they had done their best to teach her good ways, and had / not parted with her until her bad temper rendered it impossible to put / up with her any longer; that, as to the king's proclamation, they heard / little of the world's news on their lonely hill, and it had never / reached them; that if it had, they did not know how either of them / could have gone such a distance from home, and left their sheep or / their cottage, one or the other, uncared for.
"You must learn, then, how both of you can go, and your sheep must take / care of your cottage," said the lawyer, and commanded the soldiers to / bind them hand and foot.