Cluck! cluck!" And
she called her chickens to help her.
THE GINGERBREAD MAN[1]
[1] I have tried to give this story in the most familiar form; it
varies a good deal in the hands of different story-tellers, but
this is substantially the version I was "brought up on." The
form of the ending was suggested to me by the story in Carolyn
Bailey's For the Children's Hour (Milton Bradley Co.).
Once upon a time there was a little old
woman and a little old man, and they
lived all alone in a little old house. They
hadn't any little girls or any little boys,
at all. So one day, the little old woman
made a boy out of gingerbread; she made
him a chocolate jacket, and put cinnamon
seeds in it for buttons; his eyes were made
of fine, fat currants; his mouth was made
of rose-colored sugar; and he had a gay
little cap of orange sugar-candy. When
the little old woman had rolled him out,
and dressed him up, and pinched his
gingerbread shoes into shape, she put him in
a pan; then she put the pan in the oven
and shut the door; and she thought, "Now
I shall have a little boy of my own."
When it was time for the Gingerbread
Boy to be done she opened the oven door
and pulled out the pan. Out jumped the
little Gingerbread Boy on to the floor, and
away he ran, out of the door and down the
street! The little old woman and the little
old man ran after him as fast as they could,
but he just laughed, and shouted,--
"Run! run! as fast as you can!
"You can't catch me, I'm the Gingerbread Man!"
And they couldn't catch him.
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