THE LITTLE HOUSE IN THE WOOD
Project Gutenberg EPUB3 edition
Grimm, Jacob, Grimm, Wilhelm, Olcott, Frances Jenkins, and Cramer, Rie
She was lying in a vast hall, and everything around her shone with royal splendor. On the walls, golden flowers grew up on a ground of green silk. The bed was of ivory, and the canopy of red velvet, and on a chair close by, was a pair of shoes embroidered with pearls.
The girl believed that she was in a dream, but three richly clad attendants came in, and asked what orders she would like to give?
“If you will go,” she replied, “I will get up at once and make ready some soup for the Old Man, and then I will feed the pretty little hen, and the cock, and the beautiful brindled cow.”
She thought the Old Man was up already, and looked round at his bed. He, however, was not lying in it, but a stranger.
And while she was looking at him, and becoming aware that he was young and handsome, he awoke, sat up in bed, and said, “I am a King’s Son, and was enchanted by a wicked Witch, and made to live in this wood, as an old gray-haired man. No one was allowed to be with me but my three attendants in the form of a cock, a hen, and a brindled cow. The spell was not to be broken until a girl came to us, whose heart was so good that she showed herself full of love, not only toward mankind, but toward animals—and that you have done, and by you, at midnight, we were set free, and the old house in the wood was changed back again into my royal palace.”
And when they had arisen, the King’s Son ordered the three attendants to set out and fetch the father and mother of the girl to the marriage feast.
“But where are my two sisters?” inquired the girl.
“I have locked them in the cellar, and to-morrow they shall be led into the wood, and shall live as servants to a charcoal-burner, until they have grown kinder, and do not leave poor animals to suffer hunger.”