em as
fast as he could.

It did not take him long to reach them, for they had stopped to rest
in a green pool shaded by a tree whose branches swept the water. And
directly they saw him coming some of the younger ones swam out to meet
him with cries of welcome, which again the duckling hardly understood.
He approached them glad, yet trembling, and turning to one of the older
birds, who by this time had left the shade of the tree, he said:

'If I am to die, I would rather you should kill me. I don't know why I
was ever hatched, for I am too ugly to live.' And as he spoke, he bowed
his head and looked down into the water.

Reflected in the still pool he saw many white shapes, with long necks
and golden bills, and, without thinking, he looked for the dull grey
body and the awkward skinny neck. But no such thing was there. Instead,
he beheld beneath him a beautiful white swan!

'The new one is the best of all,' said the children when they came
down to feed the swans with biscuit and cake before going to bed. 'His
feathers are whiter and his beak more golden than the rest.' And when
he heard that, the duckling thought that it was worth while having
undergone all the persecution and loneliness that he had passed through,
as otherwise he would never have known what it was to be really happy.

The Two Caskets

[Hans Andersen.]

Far, far away, in the midst of a pine forest, there lived a woman who
had both a daughter and a stepdaughter. Ever since her own daughter was
born the mother had given her all that she cried for, so she grew up
to be as cross and disagreeable as she was ugly. Her stepsister, on the
other hand, had spent her childhood in working hard to keep house for
her father, who died soon after his second marriage; and she was as much
beloved by the neighbours for her goodness and industry as she was for
her beauty.

As the years went on, the difference between the two girls grew more
marked, and the old woman treated her stepdaughter worse than ever, and
was always on the watch for some pretext for beating her, or depriving
her of her food. Anything, however foolish, was good enough for this,
and one day, when she could think of nothing better, she set both the
girls to spin while sitting on the low wall of the well.

'And you had better mind what you do,' said she, 'for the one whose
thread breaks first shall be thrown to the bottom.'

But of course she took good care that her own daughter's flax