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come to her garden, and there would be her plants lying round, where the 
child had plucked them up, and then she would see the tracks of him. 
“I wish I could get sight of this rascal!” she thought, finding him droll, 
seeing that surely he must be a tiny fellow. 
So then she lay in wait for him. Presently the child came running. 
She thought him very droll, and he touched her heart. As he came running 
and reached her little plants, without hesitation he began to pluck them 
up and throw them about. She kept observing him, and found him lovably 
droll. At last he had come quite near, walking closer, as he kept uprooting 
the plants. The old woman made a dash for him. By the time he per- 
ceived her and tried to escape, she had hold of him, as he cried in fear of 
her. 
“My little grandchild, my little grandchild!” she said to him, kissing 
him again and again; “Where do you come from?” she asked him. 
“Right near here,” he told her. 
“My dear little grandchild, I am not angry at you for having spoiled 
these plants of mine. I am too glad I have found you,” she told him. 
Then, when she set him down, off he ran. Then she followed him. 
There she saw someone lying. To that place the child went. 
“What person is this, my grandchild?” she asked him; “Is this the 
one of whom you speak as your mother?” 
“Yes! There is not anyone else; there are just we two, my mother 
and I,” he told her. 
“Alas, my dear little grandchild, I see that you are in a woeful plight, 
my grandchild ! I shall take you home with me. I shall keep you as my 
own. Your mother here is not alive; she has died. You will surely perish 
here, in the end, if you do not leave her. Never since this earth began has 
it been so, has it been possible for one not living to be stayed by,” she told 
him; “I shall take you home with me,” she told him. 
“Yes!” 
Really she took her grandchild home with her. She brought him to 
her dwelling. Oh, she felt sorry for him; she pitied him and gave him 
food. The little boy liked being with the old woman. And so he ceased 
thinking of his mother. 
Then, presently, as he and his grandmother were living there, “Grand- 
son, I am in the habit of always walking about here. Do you never go off 
anywhere. Always stay and take care of the house, and from time to time 
go to my garden,” she told her grandson. 
And really, when day came, “Grandson, I am going to walk about,” 
she told him, “to look for things to eat,” she told him, “and to go, as I do 
from time to time, to where some young men live, not very far from here,” 
she told him. 
So she would always go away, and he would play there, going some- 
times to her garden, and when he went there, pulling up his grandmother’s 
plants. 
In the evening, when the old woman came, “Grandchild, did you go 
to my garden?” and when he said “Yes,” she would go there, and there her 
plants would be lying scattered about, where he had pulled them up. 
“Truly my little grandson is naughty!” the old woman would say, 
and she would laugh, as she picked them up and carried them home. When 
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