The first said, “I grant that she may grow uglier every day.”
The second said, “I grant that at every word she says, a toad shall spring out of her mouth.”
The third said, “I grant that she may die a miserable death.”
The maiden looked for strawberries outside, but as she found none, she went angrily home. And when she opened her mouth, and was about to tell her mother what had happened to her in the wood, with each word she said, a toad sprang out of her mouth, so that everybody was seized with horror of her.
Then her mother was still more enraged, and thought of nothing but how to do every possible injury to the man’s daughter, whose beauty, however, grew daily greater. At length she took a cauldron, set it on the fire, and boiled yarn in it. When it was boiled, she flung it on the poor girl’s shoulder, and gave her an axe in order that she might go on the frozen river, cut a hole in the ice, and rinse the yarn.
She was obedient, went thither and cut a hole in the ice. And while she was in the midst of her cutting, a splendid carriage came driving up, in which sat the King. The carriage stopped, and the King asked, “My Child, who are you, and what are you doing here?”
“I am a poor girl, and I am rinsing yarn.”
Then the King felt compassion, and when he saw that she was so very beautiful, he said to her, “Will you go away with me?”
“Ah, yes, with all my heart,” she answered, for she was glad to get away from the mother and sister.
So she got into the carriage and drove away with the King, and when they arrived at his palace, the wedding was celebrated with great pomp, as the Little Men had granted to the maiden.