You may imagine that the pair had little appetite HOP-O'’-

for the supper thus sent to them.
‘Oh,’ cried the wife, ‘if only—if only our babes were
here to partake of this good food. But no! the
wolves are devouring them. My pretty ones will
be eaten up in the lonely forest!’ and she gave her-
self up to passionate grief, threw herself on the
floor, and would not be comforted. Meantime her
husband, though feeling very miserable, made up
the fire, and began to roast a pair of rabbits. When
eat, he bade his wife come and eat some of the
ood.
‘No, no,’ she cried, ‘I will not eat it. I want my
children; where are my darling babes?’
‘Here we are, mother,’ cried seven little voices all
at once outside the door, and with a cry of delight
the woman opened it, and saw her sons hand in
hand standing close to it.
She clasped them in her arms, and wept and
laughed, and kissed them, as if she were mad with
ioy; and then she drew them in, and washed their
faces and hands, and made them sit down, and
fed them from her own plate before she would
taste a morsel herself. As to her husband, he also
was very glad.
Whilst the supply of rabbits lasted they lived very
comfortably and merrily; and the little boys, when
seated by the fire, would often repeat how wise
Hop-o’-my-Thumb had been to strew pebbles
along the way, and thus the father learned how
his plan had been defeated.
But the famine grew worse and worse, and the
lord of the manor could no longer supply his
tenants with food, for all the rabbits in his warren
and in the woods had been killed and eaten. The
woodcutter again grew morose, and once more
determined to take his boys into the wood and
there lose them. But as he was sure his wife
would never consent to this, he persuaded her one
H 113

THUM

Y-
B