Page:Europa's Fairy Book.djvu/216

 THUMBKIN

WOMAN was once stringing beans in her kitchen, and she thought to herself:

"Oh, why have I not got a little baby boy; if I had only one as big as one of these beans or as big as my thumb I should be content. How I would love it, and dress it, and talk to it."

As she was speaking 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 194