to ask them
to sit at the table with us?"

The Queen and the bridegroom said at once,

"There is no reason against it."

So when the feast began in came the three spinsters in strange guise,
and the bride said,

"Dear cousins, you are welcome."

"Oh," said the bridegroom, "how come you to have such dreadfully ugly
relations?"

And then he went up to the first spinster and said,

"How is it that you have such a broad flat foot?"

"With treading," answered she, "with treading."

Then he went up to the second and said,

"How is it that you have such a great hanging lip?"

"With licking," answered she, "with licking."

Then he asked the third,

"How is it that you have such a broad thumb?"

"With twisting thread," answered she, "with twisting thread."

Then the bridegroom said that from that time forward his beautiful bride
should never touch a spinning-wheel.

And so she escaped that tiresome flax-spinning.

HANSEL AND GRETHEL

NEAR a great forest there lived a poor woodcutter and his wife, and his
two children; the boy's name was Hansel and the girl's Grethel. They had
very little to bite or to sup, and once, when there was great dearth in
the land, the man could not even gain the daily bread. As he lay in bed
one night thinking of this, and turning and tossing, he sighed heavily,
and said to his wife,

"What will become of us? we cannot even feed our children; there is
nothing left for ourselves."

"I will tell you what, husband," answered the wife; "we will take the
children early in the morning into the forest, where it is thickest; we
will make them a fire, and we will give each of them a piece of bread,
then we will go to our work and leave them alone; they will never find
the way home again, and we shall be quit of them."

"No, wife," said the man, "I cannot do that; I cannot find in my heart
to take my children into the forest and to leave them there alone; the
wild animals would soon come and devour them."

"O you fool," said she, "then we will all four starve; you had better
get the coffins ready,"--and she left him no peace until he consented.

"But I really pity the poor children," said the man.

The two children had not been able to sleep for hunger, and had heard
what their step-mother had said to their father. Grethel wept bitterly,
and said to Hansel,

"It is all over with us."

"Do be quiet, Grethel," said Hansel, "and do not fret; I will manage
something." And wh