n leaf, or a little scrap of paper towards their feet,
and when the poor creatures would seize it and hold it fast, and
turn over and over in their struggles to get free from the pin, she
would say, "The cockchafer is reading; see how he turns over the
leaf." She grew worse instead of better with years, and,
unfortunately, she was pretty, which caused her to be excused, when
she should have been sharply reproved.

"Your headstrong will requires severity to conquer it," her mother
often said to her. "As a little child you used to trample on my apron,
but one day I fear you will trample on my heart." And, alas! this fear
was realized.

Inge was taken to the house of some rich people, who lived at a
distance, and who treated her as their own child, and dressed her so
fine that her pride and arrogance increased.

When she had been there about a year, her patroness said to her,
"You ought to go, for once, and see your parents, Inge."

So Inge started to go and visit her parents; but she only wanted
to show herself in her native place, that the people might see how
fine she was. She reached the entrance of the village, and saw the
young laboring men and maidens standing together chatting, and her own
mother amongst them. Inge's mother was sitting on a stone to rest,
with a fagot of sticks lying before her, which she had picked up in
the wood. Then Inge turned back; she who was so finely dressed she
felt ashamed of her mother, a poorly clad woman, who picked up wood in
the forest. She did not turn back out of pity for her mother's
poverty, but from pride.

Another half-year went by, and her mistress said, "you ought to go
home again, and visit your parents, Inge, and I will give you a
large wheaten loaf to take to them, they will be glad to see you, I am
sure."

So Inge put on her best clothes, and her new shoes, drew her dress
up around her, and set out, stepping very carefully, that she might be
clean and neat about the feet, and there was nothing wrong in doing
so. But when she came to the place where the footpath led across the
moor, she found small pools of water, and a great deal of mud, so
she threw the loaf into the mud, and trod upon it, that she might pass
without wetting her feet. But as she stood with one foot on the loaf
and the other lifted up to step forward, the loaf began to sink
under her, lower and lower, till she disappeared altogether, and
only a few bubbles on the surface of the muddy pool remaine