One night as she lay in her pretty bed, a great ugly toad hopped in at the window, for there was a broken pane. Ugh! how hideous that great wet toad was; it hopped right down on to the table where Thumbeline lay fast asleep, under the red rose-leaf.
“Here is a lovely wife for my son,” said the toad, and then she took up the walnut shell where Thumbeline slept and hopped away with it through the window, down into the garden. A great broad stream ran through it, but just at the edge it was swampy and muddy, and it was here that the toad lived with her son. Ugh! how ugly and hideous he was too, exactly like his mother. “Koax, koax, brekke-ke-kex,” that was all he had to say when he saw the lovely little girl in the walnut shell.
“Do not talk so loud or you will wake her,” said the old toad; “she might escape us yet, for she is as light as thistledown! We will put her on one of the broad water-lily leaves out in the stream; it will be just like an island to her, she is so small and light. She won’t be able to run away from there while we get the state-room ready down under the mud, which you are to inhabit.”
A great many water-lilies grew in the stream, their broad green leaves looked as if they were floating on the surface of the water. The leaf which was furthest from the shore was also the biggest, and to this one the old toad swam out with the walnut shell in which little Thumbeline lay.
The poor, tiny, little creature woke up quite early in the morning, and when she saw where she was she began to cry most bitterly, for there was water on every side of the big green leaf, and she could not reach the land at any point.
The old toad sat in the mud decking out her abode with grasses and the buds of the yellow water-lilies, so as to have it very nice for the new daughter-in-law, and then she swam out with her ugly son to the leaf where Thumbeline stood; they wanted to fetch her pretty bed to place it in the bridal chamber before they took her there. The old toad made a deep curtsey in the water before her, and said, “Here is my son, who is to be your husband, and you are to live together most comfortably down in the mud.”
“Koax, koax, brekke-ke-kex,” that was all the son could say.
Then they took the pretty little bed and swam away with it, but Thumbeline sat quite alone on the green leaf and cried because she did not want to live with the ugly toad, or have her horrid son for a husband. The little fish which swam about in the water had no doubt seen the toad and heard what she said, so they stuck their heads up, wishing, I suppose, to see the little girl. As soon as they saw her, they were delighted with her, and were quite grieved to think that she was to go down to live with the ugly toad. No, that should never happen. They flocked together down in the water round about the green stem which held the leaf she stood upon, and gnawed at it with their teeth till it floated away down the stream carrying Thumbeline away where the toad could not follow her.
Thumbeline sailed past place after place, and the little birds in the bushes saw her and sang, “What a lovely little maid.” The leaf with her on it floated further and further away and in this manner reached foreign lands.