Page:The Red Fairy Book.djvu/348

326 The man’s daughter wept, and was sorely troubled, for Little Snow was the dearest thing she had on earth, but at last she threw him overboard.

‘If my brother says that, I must do it, but Heaven knows how unwilling I am to throw thee out, Little Snow!’ said she.

So they sailed onwards a long way farther.

‘There may’st thou see the King coming out to meet thee,’ said the brother, pointing to the sea-shore.

‘What is my brother saying?’ asked his sister again.

‘Now he says that you are to make haste and throw yourself overboard,’ answered the step-mother.

She wept and she wailed, but as her brother had said that, she thought she must do it; so she leaped into the sea.

But when they arrived at the palace, and the King beheld the ugly bride with a nose that was four ells long, a jaw that was three ells, and a forehead that had a bush in the middle of it, he was quite terrified; but the wedding feast was all prepared, as regarded brewing and baking, and all the wedding guests were sitting waiting, so, ugly as she was, the King was forced to take her.

But he was very wroth, and none can blame him for that; so he caused the brother to be thrown into a pit full of snakes.

On the first Thursday night after this, a beautiful maiden came into the kitchen of the palace, and begged the kitchen-maid, who slept there, to lend her a brush. She begged very prettily, and got it, and then she brushed her hair, and the gold dropped from it.

A little dog was with her, and she said to it, ‘Go out, Little Snow, and see if it will soon be day!’

This she said thrice, and the third time that she sent out the dog to see, it was very near dawn. Then she was forced to depart, but as she went she said:

I shall come twice more, and then never again,’ said she.

In the morning the kitchen-maid related what she had seen and heard, and the King said that next Thursday night he himself