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The Three Spinning Fairies.

was once upon a time a girl, who was lazy and hated work, and nothing her mother could say would induce her to spin. At last the mother grew angry, and losing all patience with her, gave her a beating. At this, the girl began to cry so loudly, that the queen who was driving past at the time, heard her cries and stopped.

She went into the house and asked the mother why she was beating her daughter like that; "her screams," she said, "can be heard outside in the street."

The mother was ashamed to confess the truth about her daughter's laziness, and so she answered:

"I cannot get her to leave off spinning; she is for ever at her wheel, and I am too poor to keep on buying her fresh flax."

"If that is all," said the queen, "there is nothing I like so much as the sound of spinning, and I am never happier than when I can hear the humming of the wheels; let me have your daughter, and I will take her home with me 118