n up all hope of receiving. This was new life to them, for the poor
things were actually starving. The woodcutter immediately sent his wife
to the butcher's, and, as it was many a day since they had tasted meat,
she bought three times as much as was sufficient for two people's
supper. When they had appeased their hunger, the woodcutter's wife said,
"Alas! where now are our poor children? They would fare merrily on what
we have left. But it was you, William, who would lose them. Truly did I
say we should repent it. What are they now doing in the forest? Alas!
Heaven help me! the wolves have, perhaps, already devoured them. Cruel
man that you are, thus to have lost your children!"

The woodcutter began at last to lose his temper, for she repeated over
twenty times that they would repent the deed, and that she had said it
would be so. He threatened to beat her if she did not hold her tongue.
It was not that the woodcutter was not, perhaps, even more sorry than
his wife, but that she made so much noise about it, and that he was like
many other people, who are fond of women who say the right thing, but
are annoyed by those who are always in the right. The wife was all in
tears. "Alas! where are now my children, my poor children?" She uttered
her cry, at last, so loudly, that the children, who were at the door,
heard her, and began to call out all together, "Here we are! here we
are!" She rushed to the door to open it, and embracing them, exclaimed,
"How thankful I am to see you again, my dear children; you are very
tired and hungry; and you, little Peter, how dirty you are! come here
and let me wash you." Peter was her eldest son, and she loved him better
than all the rest, because he was red-headed, and she was rather
red-haired herself. They sat down to supper and ate with an appetite
that delighted their father and mother, to whom they related how
frightened they had been in the forest, nearly all keeping on speaking
at the same time. The good people were overjoyed to see their children
around them once more, and their joy lasted as long as the ten crowns.
When the money was spent, however, they fell back into their former
state of misery, and resolved to lose their children again; and to make
quite sure of doing so this time, they determined to lead them much
further from home than they had before.

They could not talk of this so secretly, but that they were overheard by
Little Thumbling, who reckoned upon being able to