hey watched her hopping about the house. But when the
neighbors came in and whispered: "Why, that child of theirs is nothing
but a frog!" they were ashamed and they decided that when people were
about they had better keep their child hidden in a closet.

So the frog girl grew up without playmates of her own age, seeing only
her father and mother. She used to play about her father as he worked.
He was a vine-dresser in a big vineyard and of course it was great fun
for the little frog girl to hop about among the vines.

Every day at noontime the woman used to come to the vineyard carrying
her husband's dinner in a basket. The years went by and she grew old and
feeble and the daily trip to the vineyard began to tire her and the
basket seemed to her to grow heavier and heavier.

"Let me help you, mother," the frog daughter said. "Let me carry
father's dinner to him and you sit home and rest."

So from that time on the frog girl instead of the old woman carried the
dinner basket to the vineyard. While the old man ate, the frog girl
would hop up into the branches of a tree and sing. She sang very sweetly
and her old father, when he petted her, used to call her his Little
Singing Frog.

Now one day while she was singing the Tsar's Youngest Son rode by and
heard her. He stopped his horse and looked this way and that but for the
life of him he couldn't see who it was who was singing so sweetly.

"Who is singing?" he asked the old man.

But the old man who, as I told you before, was ashamed of his frog
daughter before strangers, at first pretended not to hear and then, when
the young Prince repeated his question, answered gruffly:

"There's no one singing!"

But the next day at the same hour when the Prince was again riding by he
heard the same sweet voice and he stopped again and listened.

"Surely, old man," he said, "there is some one singing! It is a lovely
girl, I know it is! Why, if I could find her, I'd be willing to marry
her at once and take her home to my father, the Tsar!"

"Don't be rash, young man," the laborer said.

"I mean what I say!" the Prince declared. "I'd marry her in a minute!"

"Are you sure you would?"

"Yes, I'm sure!"

"Very well, then, we'll see."

The old man looked up into the tree and called:

"Come down, Little Singing Frog! A Prince wants to marry you!"

So the little frog girl hopped down from among the branches and stood
before the Prince.

"She's my own daughter," the lab