ing thus to herself and finishing off the beans,
suddenly she thought they all turned into little baby boys, jumping
and writhing about. She was so startled and afraid that she shook out
her apron, in which they all lay, into a big bowl of water with which
she was going to wash the beans. And then she hid her head in her
apron so as not to see what happened; and after a while she looked out
from under her apron and looked at the bowl, and there were all the
little boys floating and drowned, except one little boy at the top.
And she took pity on him and drew him out of the bowl; then she showed
him to her husband when he came home.

"We have always wanted a boy," she said to him, "even if it were not
bigger than our thumbs, and here we have him."

So they took him and dressed him up in a little doll's dress and made
much of him; and he learnt to talk, but he never grew any bigger than
their thumbs; and so they called him Thumbkin.

One day the man had to go down into the field, and he said to his
wife:

"My dear, I am going to get ready the horse and cart, and then I am
going down to the field to reap, and just at eleven o'clock I want you
to drive the cart down for me."

"Isn't that just like a man?" said his wife. "I suppose you'll want
your dinner at twelve, and how do you expect me to get it ready if I
have to drive your horse and cart down to the field and then have to
trudge back on my ten toes and get your dinner ready? What do you
think I am made of?"

"Well, it has to be done," said the man, "even if dinner has to be
late."

So they commenced quarrelling, till Thumbkin called out:

"Leave it to me, Father; leave it to me."

"Why, what can you do?" asked the man.

"Well," said Thumbkin, "if mother will only put me in Dobbin's ear, I
can guide him down to the field as well as she could."

At first they laughed, but then they thought they would try. So the
man went off to the field, and at eleven o'clock the woman put
Thumbkin into the horse's right ear; and he immediately called out,
"Gee!"

And the horse began to move. And as it went on towards the field
Thumbkin kept calling out:

"Right! Left! Left! Right!" and so on till they got near the field.

Now it happened that two men were coming that way, and they saw a
horse and cart coming towards them, with nobody on it, and yet the
horse was picking his way and turning the corners just as if somebody
was guiding him. So they followed the horse an