There was once a little girl so sweet-natured that everyone who met her loved her at once, but no one loved her so well as her grandmother, who had made her a cloak of red velvet with a hood. The child wore it everywhere and would answer to nothing else, so that in time the whole village called her Little Red Riding Hood.
One morning her mother packed a basket with a cake and a little pot of butter. “Your grandmother is poorly,” she said. “Take these along to her cottage, and go straight there, and do not dawdle on the path.”
Little Red Riding Hood promised, and set off through the wood.
She had not gone far when she met a wolf. The wolf would dearly have liked to eat her then and there, but there were woodcutters working nearby, and he thought better of it. Instead he fell into step beside her, as pleasant as you please, and asked where she was going.
“To my grandmother’s cottage,” she said, for she did not know it was a wicked thing to talk to wolves, “the one that stands beyond the mill, at the end of the lane.”
“Is that so,” said the wolf. “I shall call on her myself. I will go this way, and you go that, and we shall see who arrives first.”
And he ran off down the shorter road as fast as his legs would carry him, while the little girl took the longer way, stopping to gather nuts and chase butterflies and pick a posy of the flowers that grew along the path.
The wolf reached the cottage first. He knocked, and put on a small sweet voice, and when the grandmother called for him to come in, he did, and he swallowed her up in a single gulp, for he had not eaten in three days. Then he pulled on her cap, climbed into her bed, and drew the curtains, and waited.
By and by there came a knock.
“Who is there?” called the wolf, as softly as he could manage.
“It is Little Red Riding Hood, grandmother, with a cake and a pot of butter.”
“Lift the latch and come in, my dear.”
The little girl came in. And something about her grandmother seemed not quite right, though she could not have said what.
“Grandmother, what great arms you have.”
“All the better to hold you with, my dear.”
“Grandmother, what great ears you have.”
“All the better to hear you with, my dear.”
“Grandmother, what great eyes you have.”
“All the better to see you with, my dear.”
“Grandmother, what great teeth you have.”
“All the better to eat you with.”
Now here the old tellers part ways. In the cruelest telling that is the end of it, and the wolf has his supper, and the tale closes with a warning and nothing more. But in the kinder telling, a woodcutter passing by the window heard the commotion, and came in with his axe, and set both grandmother and granddaughter free none the worse for the fright, and the wolf troubled the wood no longer.
Either way, Little Red Riding Hood never again strayed from the path, nor stopped to pass the time with strangers, however pleasant their manners and however sweet their voices.
Not every wolf runs on four legs, and the smoothest voice is the one to trust least of all.