When she got home and asked the mirror,
“Mirror, mirror on the wall,
Who is fairest of us all?”
it answered at last,
“Queen, so beautiful and tall,
Thou art fairest of them all.”
[[147]]
Then her jealous heart was at rest—at least, as far as a jealous heart can ever be at rest.
When the dwarfs came home in the evening they found Snowdrop lying on the floor, and she neither breathed nor moved. They lifted her up and looked to see if they could find anything poisonous. They unlaced her bodice, washed her with water and wine, but all in vain; the child was dead, and remained dead. Then they laid her on a bier, and the seven dwarfs seated themselves round her, and wept for her, and mourned for three days. They were going to bury her, but she looked so fresh and lifelike and had such pretty color in her cheeks that they said, “We cannot lay her away in the dark ground.”
So they had a transparent coffin made of glass, and they laid her in it, and wrote on the lid in letters of gold her name, and that she was a King’s daughter. Then they put the coffin on the top of the mountain, and one of the dwarfs always stayed by it and [[149]]kept watch over it. And the birds came, too, and mourned for Snowdrop,—first an owl, then a raven, and last of all a little white dove.