She crumbled the bread and threw the crumbs to them all. But they didn't all eat it, because as Fanny could see, the boldest and cleverest left nothing for the others.
"It isn't right," she said to them; "each one must take his turn."
They hardly heard her. One is not always heard when one speaks of justice. She tried in every way to favor the weaker ones, and encourage the timid, but she did not succeed with them. No matter how she tried she fed the fat at the expense of the thin. It made her very sorry:
simple child that she was, she did not know it was the way of the world.
Crumb by crumb the slice of bread all went to the little singers, and Fanny went into her grandmother's house again quite pleased.
III 
At evening the grandmother took the basket in which Fanny had brought the cake to her, and filling it with plums and raisins put the handle over her arm, and said:
"Now, Fanny, run straight home, and don't stop to amuse yourself and play with any of the village scamps. Be a good girl always. Good-bye."