Grimm's Household Tales

A father was one day sitting at dinner with his wife and his children, and a good friend who had come to visit was with them. And as they sat there, and the clock was striking twelve, the guest saw the door open, and a very pale child dressed in snow-white clothes came in. The child did not look around and did not speak, but went straight into the next room. Soon afterward the child came back and went out at the door again in the same quiet manner. On the second and on the third day, the child came in exactly the same way. At last the guest asked the father whose beautiful child it was that went into the next room every day at noon. “I have never seen the child,” he said, and he did not know whose child it could be. The next day, when the child came again, the guest pointed the child out to the father, who, however, did not see the child, and the mother and the children also all saw nothing. At this the guest got up, went to the door of the room, opened it a little, and peeped in. Then he saw the child sitting on the floor, digging and searching industriously among the crevices between the boards of the floor; but when the child saw the guest, the child disappeared. He now told what he had seen and described the child exactly, and the mother recognized the child and said, “Ah, it is my dear child who died a month ago.” They took up the boards and found two farthings that the child had once received from the mother to give to a poor man. The child, however, had thought, “You can buy yourself a biscuit with this,” and had kept the farthings and hidden them in the openings between the boards. Therefore the child had had no rest in the grave and had come every day at noon to look for these farthings. The parents gave the money at once to a poor man, and after that the child was never seen again.