Page:Hans Andersen's fairy tales (Robinson).djvu/71



NCE upon a time there lived a young wife who longed exceedingly to possess a little child of her own, so she went to an old witch-woman and said to her, 'I wish so very much to have a child, a little tiny child; won't you give me one, old mother?'

'Oh, with all my heart!' replied the witch. 'Here is a barley-corn for you; it is not exactly of the same sort as those that grow on the farmer's fields, or that are given to the fowls in the poultry yard, but do you sow it in a flower-pot, and then you shall see what you shall see!'

'Thank you, thank you!' cried the woman, and she gave the witch a silver sixpence, and then having returned home 52