[Illustration]

[Illustration]

[Illustration]

And the next day the eldest girl said: "I'll bake some more pies, and
you take them to my daddy for him to eat." And so she herself sat down
in the sack, and the bear carried her off. And as he carried her along
he kept saying to himself: "Oh, I _should_ so like to sit down on a
stump, and I _should_ so like to eat one little pie!" And the eldest
daughter said to him from out of the sack: "Don't sit down on a stump,
don't! Don't eat a pie, don't!" And the bear thought: "There now, fancy
that! Look at the long way I've come, and yet she can still see and hear
me!" And so he brought the sack to the old man, and then the dogs came
upon him and all but tore him in bits. And he ran off into the forest
without as much as looking round, and the old man began once more to
live with his three little daughters.

[Illustration]

[Illustration: I don't like what is nice, but what I like _is_ nice!]

THE STRAW OX.

[Illustration]

[Illustration]

[Illustration]

Once upon a time there lived an old man and his wife, and one day she
said to him: "Make me a straw ox and smear him over with pitch." And he
asked: "What for?" And she answered: "Do what I tell you! Never mind
what it's for--that's my business!" So the old man made a straw ox and
smeared him over with pitch. Then his wife got ready in the early
morning and drove the ox to pasture. She sat down under a tree, and
began spinning flax and saying to herself: "Feed, feed, ox, on the fresh
green grass. Feed, feed, ox, on the fresh green grass!" And she went on
spinning and spinning, and fell asleep. Suddenly from out of the thick
wood, from out of the dark forest, a bear came running, and ran right up
against the ox. "Who in the world are you?" he asked. And the ox
answered: "I'm the three-year-old ox, all made of straw and smeared over
with pitch." Then the bear said: "Well, if you're smeared over with
pitch, give me some to put on my poor torn side." And the ox answered:
"Take some!" So the bear seized hold of the ox, when lo and behold! his
paw stuck in the pitch. And when he tried to free it with the other
paw, that one stuck too. Then he started gnawing with his teeth, and
they stuck too. He couldn't tear himself away anyhow. And the old woman
woke up and saw the bear stuck fast to the ox. So she ran home and
shouted to her husband: "Come along quick, a bear has stuck fast to our
ox, hurry up and catch him