The Three Bears

Three bears share a woodland house. One is very large, one medium-sized and one tiny. Each has a matching bowl, chair and bed. After preparing porridge, they leave it to cool and go walking.

An old woman approaches their house. She peers through the window and keyhole, opens the unlocked door and enters. The narrator says the bears might have invited her to breakfast if she had waited, but she helps herself instead.

The largest bear’s porridge is too hot and the middle bear’s too cold. The smallest bowl suits her, so she empties it. She then tries their chairs. The large one is too hard, the middle one too soft, and the smallest comfortable, until its seat breaks beneath her.

Upstairs she tests the beds. The first two do not suit her, but she settles into the smallest and falls asleep.

Returning home, the bears notice their disturbed bowls. The smallest finds his breakfast gone. They inspect the chairs and discover his broken seat. Upstairs, the larger bears find their bedding disturbed; the smallest discovers the intruder herself.

Their different voices finally wake her. Seeing the bears, she leaps from the open window. The narrator does not know whether she died, became lost or was arrested for vagrancy. The bears never encounter her again.