at the old
woman's house as she was at home, and the old crone was obliged to do
the work herself. At the end of three days she said to Rose. "Now you
must go home, for you are of no use to anybody, and I will keep you
here no longer."

"Very well," said Rose. "I am willing enough to go, but first pay me
my wages."

"Very well," said the old woman. "I will pay you. Go out to the
chicken-house and look for eggs. All the eggs that say, 'Take me', you
may have, but if they say, 'Do not take me', then you must not touch
them."

Rose went out to the chicken-house and hunted about and soon found the
eggs. Some were large and beautiful and white, and of these she
gathered up an apronful, though they cried to her ever so loudly, "Do
not take me." Some of the eggs were small and ugly and brown. "Take
me! Take me!" they cried.

"A pretty thing if I were to take you," she cried. "You are fit for
nothing but to be thrown out on the hillside."

She did not return to the hut to thank the old woman or bid her
good-by but set off for home the way she had come. When she reached
the thorn thicket it had closed together again. She had to force her
way through, and the thorns scratched her face and hands and almost
tore the clothes off her back. Still she comforted herself with the
thought of all the riches she would get out of the eggs.

She went a little farther, and then she took the eggs out of her
apron. "Now I will have a fine coach to travel in the rest of the
way," said she, "and gay clothes and diamonds and money," and she
threw the eggs down in the path, and they all broke at once. But no
clothes, nor jewels, nor fine coach, nor horses came out of them.
Instead snakes and toads sprang forth, and all sorts of filth that
covered her up to her knees and bespattered her clothing.

Rose shrieked and ran, and the snakes and toads pursued her, spitting
venom, and the filth rolled after her like a tide.

She reached her mother's house, and burst open the door, and ran in,
closing it behind her. "Look what Blanche has brought on me," she
sobbed. "This is all her fault."

The mother looked at her and saw the filth, and she was so angry she
would not listen to a word Blanche said. She picked up a stick to beat
her, but Blanche ran away out of the house and into the forest. She
did not stop for her clothes or her jewels or anything.

She had not gone very far before she heard a noise behind her. She
looked over her shoulder, an