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SO GRIMM’S FAIRY TALES.
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 nobody 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
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 pass away.
But in the night, the boy who slept inthe 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,
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