第９回 Thumbelina (1)

Thumbelina (1)

Once there was a tiny girl.

She was sweet and pretty and no taller than your thumb.
So Thumbelina was her name.

Every night Thumbelina slept in a bed made from a walnut shell, with a violet-petal mattress and a rose-leaf coverlet.

Every day Thumbelina played in a samll garden, where she rowed her tulip-petal boat floating on a tiny pond.

She made a most charming sight. And she went along in her boat, she sang in the sweetest little voice you never heard.

One night as Thumbelina lay sleeping in her pretty bed, a great ugly toad came hopping by and saw the lovely maiden. 

' She would make just the wife for my son '  thought the toad.
So she snatched up Thumbelina and hopped back to her home in the muddy bank of a brook.

She put the sleeping Thumbelina on a water-lily leaf.

In the morning, when poor Thumbelina woke up and saw where she was, she cried most bitterly:The big green leaf had water all around it, so she could not possibly escape.
    
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