Fairy Tales for Young Readers Read Online Free

conservatories, palm-houses, stabling, piggeries, henneries, and accommodation for 300,000 full-grown bees.” At least, that is what the auctioneer said about the houses when he came to sell them. For the merchant was unlucky. A great storm swept the sea and wrecked his six ships, that were coming home to him full of priceless stuffs; a band of robbers attacked his caravans as they came across the desert laden with the richest gems of the East. It was all quite sudden. He went to bed rich, happy, and contented. He opened his newspaper next morning, and in half a minute knew that he was a ruined man. His debts, though not more than a man in his position is accustomed to incur, and is able to pay in due course, were enough to swallow up all the money he had in the bank, as well as what he got by the sale of the two houses and all the rest of it, including his horses and carriages, and the beautiful clothes and jewels of his three daughters. Their mother had died years before, and now for the first time their father was glad of it. “At least,” he said, “ she will not have to suffer the pinch of poverty.”
    His daughters, however, had to suffer it with him. The two elder ones, as is usual in fairy stories, were proud,vain, and unattractive. They had had several offers of marriage, because it was known that their father would give them a good dowry, but they had refused every offer with scorn. Nothing short of an admiral or a duke would satisfy their ambition, and dukes were scarce just then, and all the admirals were already married. The youngest daughter was so lovely that from her childhood she had been called “Beauty.” She was as pretty as a picture, and as good as she was pretty. Every one, except her sisters, agreed that she was a perfect dear.
    A few of the merchant’s old friends clubbed together and bought him a cottage in the country, and made him a present of enough money every year for him and his daughters to live on, if he was very careful. It was a nice little house, called Rose Cottage, with a vine and climbing honeysuckle and jasmine growing all over it, and there was a good garden, with fruit trees and flowers.
    â€œNow,” said the merchant cheerfully, when they were dumped down with a few odds and ends of furniture in the empty cottage, “the world is full of ups and downs, and we are in the downs just now. If we are to live here comfortably we must all work, for we can’t afford a servant.”
    â€œ We won’t work,” said the two elder sisters. “It’s too much to expect us to soil our hands with anything so low as work. ”
    â€œMy dears,” said the merchant, “if we do have to work for a year or two, it’s only what nine-tenths of our fellow creatures have to do all their lives long. And Fortune’s wheel will very likely take another turn, if we’re patient, and lift us up again.”
    But the elder sisters only sniffed superior, and sat apart in a window-seat, remarking on the smallness of the honeysuckle and the poor quality of the jasmine flowers, while Beauty and her father arranged the furniture, got the beds ready, swept up the dust and straw scattered by the men who had done the removing, set the table, and cooked some steak for supper.

    The sisters did nothing but grumble, even saying that the steak was tough, which it wasn’t, and that the plates were not clean, which they were.
    And as they began so they went on. They spent all their time in reading and re-reading a lot of odd numbers of the Real Lady ’ s Home Journal, which an old housemaid had sent them out of pity, and trying to imagine new dresses, silks and satins and lace—to be made from the cut-out paper patterns given away with the Real Lady.
    The merchant took off his coat and turned up his shirt sleeves and went to work like a man. He cleaned the boots and knives, carried coals, blacked the grates, drew water from the well, and