‘My misery has brought me here,’ replied the old man; ‘I have no child, and all our lives my wife and I have longed for one. So I left my home, and went out into the world, hoping that somewhere I might find what I was seeking.’
Then the hermit picked up an apple from the ground, and gave it to him, saying: ‘Eat half of this apple, and give the rest to your wife, and cease wandering through the world.’
The old man stooped and kissed the feet of the hermit for sheer joy, and left the cave. He made his way through the forest as fast as the darkness would let him, and at length arrived in flowery fields, which dazzled him with their brightness. Suddenly he was seized with a desperate thirst, and a burning in his throat. He looked for a stream but none was to be seen, and his tongue grew more parched every moment. At length his eyes fell on the apple, which all this while he had been holding in his hand, and in his thirst he forgot what the hermit had told him, and instead of eating merely his own half, he ate up the old woman’s also; after that he went to sleep.
When he woke up he saw something strange lying on a bank a little way off, amidst long trails of pink roses. The old man got up, rubbed his eyes, and went to see what it was, when, to his surprise and joy, it proved to be a little girl about two years old, with a skin as pink and white as the roses above her. He took her gently in his arms, but she did not seem at all frightened, and only jumped and crowed with delight; and the old man wrapped his cloak round her, and set off for home as fast as his legs would carry him.
When they were close to the cottage where they lived he laid the child in a pail that was standing near the door, and ran into the house, crying: ‘Come quickly, wife, quickly, for I have brought you a daughter, with hair of gold and eyes like stars!’
At this wonderful news the old woman flew downstairs,
