"I"ve not enough for myself; how can I give away any?"
Now when she had done with her eating, they said,
"Here is a broom, go and sweep all clean by the back door."
"Oh, go and do it yourselves," answered she; "I am not your housemaid."
But when she saw that they were not going to give her anything, she went out to the door. Then the three little men said among themselves,
"What shall we do to her, because she is so unpleasant, and has such a wicked jealous heart, grudging everybody everything?" The first said,
"She shall grow uglier every day." The second said,
"Each time she speaks a toad shall jump out of her mouth at every word."
The third said,
"She shall die a miserable death."
The girl was looking outside for strawberries, but as she found none, she went sulkily home. And directly she opened her mouth to tell her mother what had happened to her in the wood a toad sprang out of her mouth at each word, so that every one who came near her was quite disgusted.
The step-mother became more and more set against the man"s daughter, whose beauty increased day by day, and her only thought was how to do her some injury. So at last she took a kettle, set it on the fire, and scalded some yarn in it. When it was ready she hung it over the poor girl"s shoulder, and gave her an axe, and she was to go to the frozen river and break a hole in the ice, and there to rinse the yarn. She obeyed, and went and hewed a hole in the ice, and as she was about it there came by a splendid coach, in which the King sat. The coach stood still, and the King said,
"My child, who art thou, and what art thou doing there?" She answered,
"I am a poor girl, and am rinsing yarn."
Then the King felt pity for her, and as he saw that she was very beautiful, he said,
"Will you go with me?"
"Oh yes, with all my heart," answered she; and she felt very glad to be out of the way of her mother and sister.
So she stepped into the coach and went off with the King; and when they reached his castle the wedding was celebrated with great splendour, as the little men in the wood had foretold.
At the end of a year the young Queen had a son; and as the step-mother had heard of her great good fortune she came with her daughter to the castle, as if merely to pay the King and Queen a visit. One day, when the King had gone out, and when n.o.body was about, the bad woman took the Queen by the head, and her daughter took her by the heels, and dragged her out of bed, and threw her out of the window into a stream that flowed beneath it. Then the old woman put her ugly daughter in the bed, and covered her up to her chin. When the King came back, and wanted to talk to his wife a little, the old woman cried,
"Stop, stop! she is sleeping nicely; she must be kept quiet to-day."
The King dreamt of nothing wrong, and came again the next morning; and as he spoke to his wife, and she answered him, there jumped each time out of her mouth a toad instead of the piece of gold as heretofore. Then he asked why that should be, and the old woman said it was because of her great weakness, and that it would pa.s.s away.
But in the night, the boy who slept in the kitchen saw how something in the likeness of a duck swam up the gutter, and said,--
"My King, what mak"st thou?
Sleepest thou, or wak"st thou?"
But there was no answer. Then it said,
"What cheer my two guests keep they?"
So the kitchen-boy answered,
"In bed all soundly sleep they."
It asked again,
"And my little baby, how does _he_?"
And he answered,
"He sleeps in his cradle quietly."
Then the duck took the shape of the Queen and went to the child, and gave him to drink, smoothed his little bed, covered him up again, and then, in the likeness of a duck, swam back down the gutter. In this way she came two nights, and on the third she said to the kitchen-boy,
"Go and tell the King to brandish his sword three times over me on the threshold!"
Then the kitchen-boy ran and told the King, and he came with his sword and brandished it three times over the duck, and at the third time his wife stood before him living, and hearty, and sound, as she had been before.
The King was greatly rejoiced, but he hid the Queen in a chamber until the Sunday came when the child was to be baptized. And after the baptism he said,
"What does that person deserve who drags another out of bed and throws him in the water?"
And the old woman answered,
"No better than to be put into a cask with iron nails in it, and to be rolled in it down the hill into the water."
Then said the King,
"You have spoken your own sentence;" and he ordered a cask to be fetched, and the old woman and her daughter were put into it, and the top hammered down, and the cask was rolled down the hill into the river.
THE THREE SPINSTERS
THERE was once a girl who was lazy and would not spin, and her mother could not persuade her to it, do what she would. At last the mother became angry and out of patience, and gave her a good beating, so that she cried out loudly. At that moment the Queen was going by; as she heard the crying, she stopped; and, going into the house, she asked the mother why she was beating her daughter, so that every one outside in the street could hear her cries.
The woman was ashamed to tell of her daughter"s laziness, so she said,
"I cannot stop her from spinning; she is for ever at it, and I am poor and cannot furnish her with flax enough."
Then the Queen answered,
"I like nothing better than the sound of the spinning-wheel, and always feel happy when I hear its humming; let me take your daughter with me to the castle--I have plenty of flax, she shall spin there to her heart"s content."
The mother was only too glad of the offer, and the Queen took the girl with her. When they reached the castle the Queen showed her three rooms which were filled with the finest flax as full as they could hold.
"Now you can spin me this flax," said she, "and when you can show it me all done you shall have my eldest son for bridegroom; you may be poor, but I make nothing of that--your industry is dowry enough."