hand in hand; and when
Snow-white said, "We will not forsake one another," Rose-red answered,
"Never, as long as we live;" and the mother added, "Yes, my children,
whatever one has, let her divide with the other." They often ran about
in solitary places, and gathered red berries; and the wild creatures
of the wood never hurt them, but came confidingly up to them. The
little hare ate cabbage-leaves out of their hands, the doe grazed at
their side, the stag sprang merrily past them, and the birds remained
sitting on the boughs, and never ceased their songs. They met with no
accident if they loitered in the wood and right came on; they lay down
together on the moss, and slept till morning; and the mother knew
this, and was in no anxiety about them. Once, when they had spent the
night in the wood, and the red morning awoke them, they saw a
beautiful child in a shining white dress, sitting by the place where
they had slept, who, arising, and looking at them kindly, said
nothing, but went into the wood. And when they looked round, they
found out that they had been sleeping close to a precipice, and would
certainly have fallen down it if they had gone a few steps farther in
the dark. Their mother told them it must have been the angel that
takes care of good children who had sat by them all night long.

Snow-white and Rose-red kept their mother's cottage so clean, that it
was a pleasure to look into it. In the summer, Rose-red managed the
house, and every morning she gathered a nosegay in which was a rose
off each tree, and set it by her mother's bed before she awoke. In
winter Snow-white lighted the fire, and hung the kettle on the hook;
and though it was only copper, it shone like gold, it was rubbed so
clean. In the evening, when the snow fell, the mother said, "Go,
Snow-white, and bolt the door;" and then they seated themselves on the
hearth, and the mother took her spectacles, and read aloud out of a
great book, and the two girls listened, and sat and span. Near them
lay a lamb on the floor, and behind them, on a perch, sat a white
dove, with its head under its wing.

One evening, as they were thus happy together, some one knocked to be
let in. The mother said, "Quick, Rose-red, open the door; perhaps it
is a traveller who seeks shelter." Rose-red went and pushed the bolt
back, and thought it was a poor man, but a bear stretched his thick
black head into the door. Rose-red screamed and sprang back, the
little lamb bleat