When it was done she thought that this one was too nice and brown for a beggar. So she baked a smaller cake, and then a still smaller one, but each came out of the oven as nice and as brown as the first.
At last she took a piece of dough as small as the head of a pin. Even this, when it was baked, was as large and as fine as the others. So the old lady put all the cakes on the shelf and offered the old man a crust of dry bread.
The old man only looked at her, and before the old lady could wink, he was gone.
The old lady thought a great deal about what she had done. She knew it was very wrong.
“I wish I were a bird,” she said; “I would fly to him with the largest cake I have.”
As she spoke, she felt herself growing smaller and smaller. Suddenly the wind picked her up and carried her up the chimney.
When she came out she still had on her red bonnet and black dress. You could see her white apron with the big bows. But she was a bird, just as she had wished to be.
She was a wise bird, and at once she began to pick her food out of the hard wood of a tree. As people saw her at work, they called her the red-headed woodpecker.
Tuesday
Have the children tell the story of the red-headed woodpecker.