Page:The Grey Fairy Book.djvu/181

Rh And on the morning of the fourth day the eldest brother said, ‘Dear father, would you like to hear our adventures?’

‘Certainly I should!’

‘Well, it was our aunt who was the cause of our leaving home, for we agreed that if the baby was a sister she should wave a white handkerchief, and if it was a brother, she should brandish a sickle, for then there would be nothing to come back for, and we might wander far away. Now our aunt could not bear us, and hated us to live in the same house with her, so she brandished the sickle, and we went away. That is all our story.’

And that is all this story.