n the water,
and upon it floated a large tulip leaf, which served the little one for
a boat. Here she sat and rowed herself from side to side, with two oars
made of white horsehair. It was a very pretty sight. Thumbelina could
also sing so softly and sweetly that nothing like her singing had ever
before been heard.

One night, while she lay in her pretty bed, a large, ugly, wet toad
crept through a broken pane of glass in the window and leaped right upon
the table where she lay sleeping under her rose-leaf quilt.

"What a pretty little wife this would make for my son," said the toad,
and she took up the walnut shell in which Thumbelina lay asleep, and
jumped through the window with it, into the garden.

In the swampy margin of a broad stream in the garden lived the toad with
her son. He was uglier even than his mother; and when he saw the pretty
little maiden in her elegant bed, he could only cry "Croak, croak,
croak."

"Don't speak so loud, or she will wake," said the toad, "and then she
might run away, for she is as light as swan's-down. We will place her on
one of the water-lily leaves out in the stream; it will be like an
island to her, she is so light and small, and then she cannot escape;
and while she is there we will make haste and prepare the stateroom
under the marsh, in which you are to live when you are married."

Far out in the stream grew a number of water lilies with broad green
leaves which seemed to float on the top of the water. The largest of
these leaves appeared farther off than the rest, and the old toad swam
out to it with the walnut shell, in which Thumbelina still lay asleep.

The tiny creature woke very early in the morning and began to cry
bitterly when she found where she was, for she could see nothing but
water on every side of the large green leaf, and no way of reaching the
land.

Meanwhile the old toad was very busy under the marsh, decking her room
with rushes and yellow wildflowers, to make it look pretty for her new
daughter-in-law. Then she swam out with her ugly son to the leaf on
which she had placed poor Thumbelina. She wanted to bring the pretty
bed, that she might put it in the bridal chamber to be ready for her.
The old toad bowed low to her in the water and said, "Here is my son; he
will be your husband, and you will live happily together in the marsh by
the stream."

"Croak, croak, croak," was all her son could say for himself. So the
toad took up the elegant little