Page:Fairy tales and stories (Andersen, Tegner).djvu/370

338 by the children. He only wants them to be quiet, and the best way to do this is to get them to bed. They must be quiet, so that he can tell them stories.

As soon as the children are asleep, Daddy Dustman sits down on the bed. He is nicely dressed; his coat is of silk, but it is impossible to say what color it is, for it looks green, red, or blue, according to how he turns round. He carries an umbrella under each arm. One of them, with pictures inside, he spreads over the good children, and then they dream the most beautiful stories the whole night; but the other umbrella, which has no pictures, he puts over the naughty children, who fall into a heavy sleep, and awake in the morning without having dreamed anything.

We shall now hear how Daddy Dustman came every evening for a whole week to a little boy, whose name was Hjalmar, and what he told him. There are altogether seven stories, for there are seven days in the week.