“That is a most beautiful flower!” said the woman, while she bent down to kiss its red and yellow leaves; but scarcely had her lips pressed the flower, than it gave forth a loud sound and opened its cup. And now the woman was able to see that it was a regular tulip, and in the midst of the cup, down at the bottom, there sat a small and most lovely little maiden; her height was about one inch, and on that account the woman named her Ellise. She made the little thing a cradle out of a walnut-shell, gave her a blue violet-leaf for a mattress, and a rose-leaf for a coverlet. In this cradle Ellise slept at night time, and during the day she played upon the table. The woman had set a plate filled with water upon the table, which she surrounded with flowers, and the flower-stalks all rested on the edge of the water; on the water floated a large tulip-leaf, and upon the tulip-leaf sat the little Ellise, and sailed from one side of the plate to the other; and for this she used two white horse-hairs for oars. The whole effect was very charming, and Ellise could sing too, but with such a delicate little voice as we have never heard here. One night as she lay in her bed, an ugly toad hopped into her through the broken window pane. It was a large and very hideous toad; and it sprang at once upon the table, where Ellise lay asleep under the rose-leaf. “That would be, now, a nice little wife for my son,” said the toad, and seized, as she said it, the walnut-shell in her mouth, and hopped with it out through the window into the garden again. Through the garden flowed a broad stream, but its banks were marshy, and among the marshes lived the toad and her son. Ha! how hideous the son was too; exactly like his mother he was, and all that he could say, when he saw the sweet little maiden in the walnut-shell, was “Koax! koax! breckke ke!” “Don’t talk so loud,” said the old one to him, “else you’ll awake her, and then she might easily run away from us, for she is lighter than swans’-down. We will set her upon a large plant in the stream; that will be a whole island for her, and then she cannot run away from us; while we, down in the mud, will build the house for you two to live in.” In the stream there were many large plants, which all seemed as if they floated on the water; the most distant one was, at the same time, the largest, and thither swam the old toad and set down the walnut-shell, with the little maiden upon it. Early on the following morning the little Ellise awoke, and when she looked about her and saw where she was, that her new dwelling-place was surrounded on all sides by water, and that there remained no possible way for her to reach land again, she began to weep most bitterly. Meanwhile the old toad sat in the mud and adorned the building with reeds and yellow flowers, that it might be quite grand for her future daughter-in-law, and then, in company with her hideous son, swam to the little leaf-island where Ellise lay.