Page:The fairy tales of Charles Perrault (Clarke, 1922).djvu/138



FAIRY · TALES · OF · PERRAULT eaten them up: thou art very inhuman thus to have lost thy children."

The faggot-maker grew at last quite out of patience, for she repeated this above twenty times, that they should repent of it, and she was in the right of it for so saying. He threatened to beat her, if she did not hold her tongue. It was not that the faggot-maker was not, perhaps, more vexed than his wife, but that she teized him, and that he was of the humour of a great many others, who love wives who speak right, but think those very importunate who are always in the right. She was half drowned in tears, crying out:

"Alas! where are now my children, my poor children?"

She spake this so very loud, that the children who were at the door, began to cry out all together:

"Here we are, here we are."

She ran immediately to open the door, and said, hugging them:

"I am glad to see you, my dear children; you are very hungry and weary; and my poor Peter, thou art horribly bemired; come in and let me clean thee."

Now, you must know, that Peter was her eldest son, whom she loved above all the rest, because he was somewhat carrotty, as she herself was. They sat down to supper, and ate with such a good appetite as pleased both father and mother, whom they acquainted how frightened they were in the forest; speaking almost always all together. The good folks were extremely glad to see their children once more at 114