Atondido Stories
Betushka looked around. The sun was sinking behind the
wood. She put her hands to the unspun flax on her head and re-
membered the spindle that was lying unfilled on the grass. She
took down the flax and laid it with the spindle in the little bas-
ket. Then she called the goats and started home.
She reproached herself bitterly that she had allowed the
beautiful maiden to beguile her and she told herself that another
time she would not listen to her. She was so quiet that the little
goats, missing her merry song, looked around to see whether it
was really their own little shepherdess who was following them.
Her mother, too, wondered why she didn’t sing and questioned
her.
“Are you sick, Betushka?”
“No, dear mother, I’m not sick, but I’ve been singing too
much and my throat is dry.”
She knew that her mother did not reel the yarn at once, so
she hid the spindle and the unspun flax, hoping to make up to-
morrow what she had not done today. She did not tell her moth-
er one word about the beautiful maiden.
The next day she felt cheerful again and as she drove the
goats to pasture she sang merrily. At the birch wood she sat
down to her spinning, singing all the while, for with a song on
the lips work falls from the hands more easily.
Noonday came. Betushka gave a bit of bread to each of the
goats and ran off to the woods for her berries. Then she ate her
luncheon.
“Ah, my little goats,” she sighed, as she brushed up the
crumbs for the birds, “I mustn’t dance today.”
“Why mustn’t you dance today?” a sweet voice asked, and
there stood the beautiful maiden as though she had fallen from
the clouds.
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