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I hunted for you high and low only to hear that you had been found by Granny Grim-Eye. What is the result? You have grown up beautiful and stupid. After all these years you don't know a strawberry from a dragon's-apple. If you had remained with me you would have grown to be the most beautiful as well as the wittiest woman in the world.
"It so happened one day that Granny Grim-Eye was too sick to pick the strawberries herself, as she always had done, and she was afraid to trust the Strawberry-Girl to pick them. But the rich man sent word that he was to have a company of friends to dinner and he must have some strawberries. There was nothing for Granny Grim-Eye to do but to send the Strawberry-Girl to the patch.
One day when she went after strawberries she found a beautiful little girl asleep in the patch. "'Hity-tity! said Granny Grim-Eye, 'what are you doing here? Where did you come from, and where are you going? "The little girl awoke and stared at Granny Grim-Eye. She was tied to a blackberry-bush by a silver chain so fine that the links of it could hardly be seen with the naked eye.
'Who are you? asked Granny Grim-Eye. "'Nothing nor nobody, replied the little girl, and that was all the answer Granny Grim-Eye could get from the child. "'Well, said Granny Grim-Eye, 'this is my strawberry-patch, and everything I find in it belongs to me. I'll take you home and see what I can make out of you.
She fretted until she began to lose some of her beauty, and when Granny Grim-Eye saw this she began to ask questions, and it was not long before she found out all about the bargain the Strawberry-Girl had made with the little Old Man of the Wood. "'Oho! she cried. 'He is up to his old tricks, is he? Well, we shall see!
She was so old that the skin on her forehead had deep wrinkles in it, and these wrinkles caused everybody to think that the old woman was frowning all the time. People called her Granny Grim-Eye. "Whenever Granny Grim-Eye got hungry she went to a strawberry-patch in the field near where she lived, and gathered a basket of strawberries.
Granny Grim-Eye called her up and cautioned her not to pick anything but good, ripe strawberries, and then sent her off to the patch. "But on the way the Strawberry-Girl saw some red berries growing on bushes, and these she picked and put in the basket until it was full. 'These are just as red as ripe strawberries, she said, 'and they will do just as well.
In fact, I have heard my mother say that the Strawberry-Girl was as stupid and as silly as she could be, but she was so beautiful that people were inclined to forgive her for being stupid. "Granny Grim-Eye used to send her with strawberries to sell to the rich man who owned nearly all the land in that part of the country.
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