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Mother Holle.

upon a time there was a widow who had two daughters; one of them was beautiful and industrious, the other ugly and lazy. The mother, however, loved the ugly and lazy one best, because she was her own daughter, and so the other, who was only her step-daughter, was made to do all the work of the house, and was quite the Cinderella of the family. Her step-mother sent her out every day to sit by the well in the high-road, there to spin until she made her fingers bleed. Now it chanced one day that some blood fell on to the spindle, and as the girl stooped over the well to wash it off, the spindle suddenly sprang out of her hand and fell into the water. She ran home crying to tell of her 126