"There, you can have all this, if you will give me all I want."
At first, the widow's eyes opened wide, and then she glanced at the cradle, where her baby was sleeping. Then she wondered, though she said nothing.
But the next moment, she was laughing at herself, and looking around at her poor cottage. She tried to guess what there was in it, that the old lady could possibly want.
"You can have anything I have. Name it," she said cheerfully to her visitor.
But only a moment more, and all her fears returned at the thought that the visitor might ask for her boy.
The old lady spoke again and said:
"I want to help you all I can, but what I came here for is to get the little boy in the cradle."
The widow now saw that the old woman was a fairy, and that if her visitor got hold of her son, she would never see her child again.
So she begged piteously of the old lady, to take anything and everything, except her one child.
"No, I want that boy, and, if you want the gold, you must let me take him."