Page:The folk-tales of the Magyars.djvu/284

 208 father's choice. At last, having got tired of looking at the things, everyone put away her share into her closet. The pretty little girl placed the three walnuts in her bosom and felt very sad. The two elder girls could hardly wait for Sunday. They dressed up most showily; they painted their faces, and as soon as the bells began to ring ran to church and stuck themselves in the front pew. Before leaving home, however, they gave the pretty little girl some very dirty wheat and ordered her to clean it—about half a bushel full—by the time they came back from church. The little girl began to sort the wheat weeping, and her tears mingled with the wheat; but her complaining was heard in Heaven and the Lord sent her a flock of white pigeons who in a minute picked out the dirt and the tares from among the wheat, and in another minute flew back to where they had come from. The little girl gave thanks to Providence and cried no more. She fetched her three walnuts in order to eat them, but as she opened the first one a beautiful copper dress fell out of it; from the second a silver one; and from the third a glittering gold one. She was highly delighted, and at once locked the two walnuts in which the gold and silver dresses were, safely in a cupboard. She put on the copper dress, hurried off to church, and sat down in the last pew all among the old women: and lo! the whole congregation stood up to admire her, so that the clergyman was obliged to stop in his sermon: the two old maids looked back quite surprised and found that the new comer's dress was ever so much prettier than their own.

It happened that the king's son was also present in whose country the village was and in which village the poor man and his new wife lived. The beautiful girl dressed in the glittering copper dress was at once noticed by the king's son who was at that time looking for a wife all over the country. As soon as the pretty little girl noticed that the sermon was coming to an end she left her seat and ran home in order to get undressed before her step-mother and her two sisters got home. The king sent