lying unfilled on the grass. She took down the flax and laid it with the spindle in the little basket. 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 tomorrow what she had not done today. She did not tell her mother 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
