GRIMM'S FAIRY TALES - online book

130 Fairy Stories Adapted & Arranged for young people

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3io THE OLD GRANDFATHERS CORNER.
keep it in his mouth when it got there. His son and daughter were so annoyed to see his conduct at the table, that at last they placed a chair for him in a corner behind the screen, and gave him his meals in an earthenware basin quite away from the rest. He would often look sorrowfully at the table with tears in his eyes, but he did not complain.
One day, thinking sadly of the past, the earthenware basin, which he could scarcely hold in his trembling hands, fell to the ground and was broken. The young wife scolded him well for being so careless, but he did not reply, only sighed deeply. Then she bought him a wooden bowl for a penny, and gave him his meals in it.
Some days afterwards his son and daughter saw their little boy, who was about four years old, sitting on the ground and trying to fasten together some pieces of wood.
" What are you making, my boy ?" asked his father.
m I am making a little bowl for papa and mamma to eat their food in when I grow up," he replied.
The husband and wife looked at each other without speaking for some minutes. At last they began to shed tears, and went and brought their old father back to the table, and from that day he always took his meals with them, and was never again treated un­kindly.
A little brother and sister were one day playing together by the side of a well, and not being careful they both fell in. Under the water they found a fairy, who said to them : " Now I have caught you, and I intend you to work for me."
So she carried them both away. When they arrived at her home, she set the maiden to spin hard, tangled flax, and gave her a cask full of holes to fill with water ; and she sent the boy to the wood with a blunt axe, and told him to cut wood for her fire.
The children became at last so impatient with this treatmeut that they waited till one Sunday, when the fairy was at church, and ran away. But the church was close by, and as *hey were