Page:Popular tales from the Norse (1912).djvu/620

 434 They told her they had not taken any—that it was the baby—but she would not believe them, and said, "How could a little baby get up and help itself;" but the children still persisted it was the baby. So one day, when she was going out, she put some pumpkin in a calabash, and set a trap over it. When she was gone, the baby got up as usual to eat the food, and got its head fastened in the trap, so that it could not get out, and began knocking its head about, and crying out, "Oh! do loose me, for that woman will kill me when she comes back." When the woman came in, she found the baby fastened in the trap, so she jat it well, and turned it out of doors, and begged her children's pardon for having wronged them.

Then after she turned the baby out, he changed into a great big man, and went to the river, where he saw the old man sitting by the river side, who asked him to wash his head, as he had asked the poor woman, but the man said,—

"No, he would not wash his dirty head," and so he wished the old man " good-bye."

Then the old man asked him if he would like to have a pumpkin, to which he said "yes," and the old man told him to go on till he saw a large tree with plenty of pumpkins on it, and then he must ask for one. So he went on till he got to the tree, and the pumpkins looked so nice he could not be satisfied with one, so he called out, "Ten pumpkins come down," and the ten pumpkins fell and crushed him.

THE BROTHER AND HIS SISTERS.

were once upon a time three sisters and a brother. The sisters were all proud, and one was very beautiful, and she did not like her little brother, "because," she said, "he was dirty." Now, this beautiful sister was to be married, and the brother