nd get back to your work. You'll get a good pounding if
mother comes home and finds you cutting up tricks."

"No, I'm not going to work any more--I'm going to dance."

"Well, I admit dancing is good fun," Gretel answered him reluctantly.
"We can dance a little, and sing to keep us in time, and then we can
go back to work."

Brother, come and dance with me,
Both my hands I offer thee,
Right foot first,
Left foot then,
Round about and back again,

she sang, holding out her hands.

"I don't know how, or I would," Haensel declared, watching her as she
spun about.

"Then I'll teach you. Just keep your eyes on me and I'll teach you
just how to do it," she cried, and then she began to dance. Gretel
told him precisely how to do it, and Haensel learned very well and very
quickly. Then they danced together, and in half a minute had forgotten
all about going back to their work. They twirled and laughed and sang
and shouted in the wildest sort of glee, and at last, perfectly
exhausted with so much fun, they tumbled over one another upon the
floor, and were laughing too hard to get up. Just at this moment, when
they had actually forgotten all about hunger and work, home came their
mother. She opened the door and looked in.

"For mercy's sake! what goings on are these?" she cried.

"Why, it was Haensel, he----"

"Gretel wanted to----" they both began, scrambling to their feet.

"That will do. I want to hear nothing from you. You are the most
ill-behaved children in the world. Here are your father and I slaving
ourselves to death for you, and not a thing do you do but dance and
sing from morning till night----"

"It would be awfully nice to eat, too," Haensel replied reflectively.

"What's that you say, you ungrateful child? Don't you eat whenever the
rest of us do?" However harsh she seemed, the mother was only angry at
the thought of there being nothing in the house to eat, and she felt
so badly to think the children were hungry that she made a dive at
Haensel to slap him, when--horrors! she knocked the milk off the table,
broke the jug, and all the milk went streaming over the floor. This
was indeed a misfortune. There they stood, all three looking at their
lost supper.

"_Now_ see what you have done?" she screamed angrily at the children.
"Get yourselves out of here. If you want any supper you'll have to
work for it. Take that basket and go into the wood and fill it with
strawberries, an