She felt quite frightened, but she did not know why. ‘Generally I like coming to see Grandmother so much,’ she thought. She cried: ‘Good-morning, Grandmother,’ but she received no answer.
Then she went up to the bed and drew the curtain back. There lay her Grandmother, but she had drawn her cap down over her face, and she looked very odd.
‘O Grandmother, what big ears you have got,’ she said.
‘The better to hear with, my dear.’
‘Grandmother, what big eyes you have got.’
‘The better to see with, my dear.’
‘What big hands you have got, Grandmother.’
‘The better to catch hold of you with, my dear.’
‘But, Grandmother, what big teeth you have got.’
‘The better to eat you up with, my dear.’
Hardly had the Wolf said this, than he made a spring out of bed, and devoured poor little Red Riding Hood. When the Wolf had satisfied himself, he went back to bed and he was soon snoring loudly.
A Huntsman went past the house, and thought, ‘How loudly the old lady is snoring; I must see if there is anything the matter with her.’
So he went into the house, and up to the bed, where he found the Wolf fast asleep. ‘Do I find you here, you old sinner?’ he said. ‘Long enough have I sought you.’
He raised his gun to shoot, when it just occurred to him that perhaps the Wolf had eaten up the old lady, and that she might still be saved. So he took a knife and began cutting open the sleeping Wolf. At the first cut he saw the little red cloak, and after a few more slashes, the little girl sprang out, and cried: ‘Oh, how frightened I was, it was so dark inside the Wolf!’ Next the old Grandmother came out, alive, but hardly able to breathe.
Red Riding Hood brought some big stones with which they filled the Wolf, so that when he woke and tried to spring away, they dragged him back, and he fell down dead.
