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Resentful, sleepy, fearful, and exiled from the rooms of birth and death they crouched together and watched the paling sky, their own quarrels forgotten in their common discomfort; and overhead the cries of the new-born child pierced the air of the new day. A bullet-headed little boy of eight sat astride upon a farmyard gate, whistling and beating time with a hazel-switch.

They tugged his hair with their hands, put their feet upon his back and rolled him about, or they took a hazel-switch and beat him, and when he growled they laughed. But the bear took it all in good part, only when they were too rough he called out: 'Leave me alive, children, 'Snow-white, Rose-red, Will you beat your wooer dead?

To his surprise, the reply she made was in a series of smart strokes across his shoulders, administered through the medium of a supple hazel-switch. "Take that!" said she, almost breathless, "to teach thee how thou darest make a fool of an honest woman old enough to be thy mother.

They tugged his hair with their hands, put their feet upon his back and rolled him about, or they took a hazel-switch and beat him, and when he growled they laughed. But the bear took it all in good part, only when they were too rough he called out, "Leave me alive, children, "Snowy-white, Rosy-red, Will you beat your lover dead?"