‘Gladly,’ she said, and breaking her crust in two, she gave them the half.
Then they asked her what she was doing in the depths of winter in her thin dress.
‘Oh,’ she answered, ‘I have been sent to get a basketful of strawberries, and I daren’t show my face again at home till I bring them with me.’
When she had finished her bread they gave her a broom and told her to sweep away the snow from the back door. As soon as she left the room to do so, the three little men consulted what they should give her as a reward for being so sweet and good, and for sharing her last crust with them.
The first said: ‘Every day she shall grow prettier.’
The second: ‘Every time she opens her mouth a piece of gold shall fall out.’
And the third: ‘A King shall come and marry her.’
The girl in the meantime was doing as the Dwarfs had bidden her, and was sweeping the snow away from the back door, and what do you think she found there?—heaps of fine ripe strawberries that showed out dark red against the white snow. She joyfully picked enough to fill her basket, thanked the little men for their kindness, shook hands with them, and ran home to bring her stepmother what she had asked for. When she walked in and said; Good evening,’ a piece of gold fell out of her mouth. Then she told what had happened to her in the wood, and at every word pieces of gold dropped from her mouth, so that the room was soon covered with them.
‘She’s surely more money than wit to throw gold about like that,’ said her stepsister, but in her secret heart she was very jealous, and determined that she too would go to the wood and look for strawberries. But her mother refused to let her go, saying:
‘My dear child, it is far too cold; you might freeze to death.’