"The one wing is burned already," thought she; "it would be better without it." So she cut it off and ate it, and it was delicious. So when she had finished it, she thought, "The other wing must go too, else master will see that one is wanting." When she had eaten the second wing, she went once more to the window and looked for her master, but she did not see him. "Who knows," thought she, "perhaps they won't come at all. It looks as if they had gone somewhere else." Then she said, "Grethel, my girl, you have begun with one, take another drink, and finish it altogether; when it is eaten you will have peace. Why should the good things that are sent us be wasted?" She, therefore, ran once more to the cellar, took a good draught, and then ate up the rest of the hen with great glee. When it was all down, and her master had not yet come, she looked at the other hen and said, "Where the one is, the other must be, the two go together: what was right for the one is fair for the other." So the second hen followed the first, for she ate it as well. When she had just finished, in came the master, and cried, "Grethel, bring in the fowls quickly, the guest will be here presently." "Yes, master," said Grethel, "I shall attend to it at once." Her master saw, meanwhile, that the cloth was laid and the table set out, and took up the carving-knife with which he was to cut up the hens, and began to whet it. Meanwhile, the guest came, and knocked modestly at the hall door. Grethel ran and looked who was there, and when she saw it was the guest, she put her finger to her mouth and said: "Hush, hush! be off as quickly as you can; for if my master catches you, it will be worse for you: he has invited you to supper, I know; but he only did so that he might cut off both your ears. Listen, how he whets the knife!" The guest heard the sound, and hurried as fast as he could from the door-step. Grethel thereupon ran to her master and said, "You have invited a pretty guest, indeed, master!"-" Why," cried he, "what's the matter?"-"Master, sir, he snatched up both the hens from the dish, as I was bringing them to table, and ran off with them."-"That's a pretty way to do," said the master. "If he had only taken one, there would have been something left for me to eat." With that he ran to the street, and cried out after the guest to stop, but the guest pretended he did not hear him. So he ran after him, with the knife still in his hand, and cried out, "Only one, only one," meaning that the guest should take the one hen and leave the other. But the guest thought he meant only one of his ears, and ran as if fire were behind him, that he might keep the two. I need not tell you, that Grethel's cleverness did not save her long, for her master soon found out how she had behaved, and turned her away. More than that, she had got fond of drinking, and she came to be a poor drunken woman, for whom nobody cared. DICTATION.-Grethel's two hens were roasted beautifully, but the guest did not come, and Grethel ate first the one and then the other, and as she was thirsty she drank once and again. When the guest came she told him his master had invited him, but only to cut off his ears, and on this the guest ran off, with the master after him crying, only one." QUESTIONS. Of what was Grethel proud? her master bid her do? when her master was out? she say? What followed? "Only one, What did What did she do with the hens I COME from haunts of coot and hern, I make a sudden sally, And sparkle out among the fern, To bicker down a valley. By thirty hills I hurry down, For men may come, and men may gʊ, But I |