Boys and Girls Bookshelf; a Practical Plan of Character Building Part 65

[Ill.u.s.tration: "MAY I LEAVE MY BAG HERE?" SAID THE FOX]

The woman looked at the bag and said to herself: "Now I wonder what it is that that sly old fellow carries so carefully? It will do no harm to see."

So she untied the string and opened the bag and the ox jumped out and ran out into the yard, and the little boy who was playing there chased him off over the hill and into the wood.

When the Fox came back he saw that the string had been untied, and he said to the old woman: "Where is my ox?"

"I opened the bag the least little bit, and the ox jumped out and the little boy chased him over the hill and into the wood," said the old woman.

"Then I must take the little boy," said the Fox.

So he gathered up the little boy and put him into the bag and tied the string and threw the bag over his shoulder and started off down the road.

When he came to the next house he knocked at the door and said: "Good morning, Good Mother. The way is long and I am weary. May I leave my bag while I go to the store?"

"That will be all right," said the woman, "put it behind the door."

So the Fox put the bag behind the door, saying as he did so: "Be sure that you do not untie the string, Good Mother," and went off.

This woman was very busy that morning, making cake, and she had no time to think of the bag, and it lay there for a long time. By-and-by when the cake was done her little boys gathered around the table, crying: "Let me taste the cake, Mother. Give me a piece of cake!" And she gave each one of them a piece of cake.

The cake smelled so good that the little boy in the bag cried out: "Oh, I want a piece of cake, too."

When the woman heard the little boy cry out she went to the bag, and looking down at it, she said: "Now I wonder what that sly Fox has been about?" And the little boy cried out again, and the woman untied the string and let him out, and took the house dog and put him into the bag instead, and the little boy joined the others around the table, and she gave him a piece of the cake.

When the Fox came back he saw that the bag was all tied up, and looked just as it had when he left it, so he took it from behind the door and threw it over his shoulder, saying to himself: "I have had a long journey to-day, and I am hungry. And I have not done so badly, either. I will now go into the woods and see how the little boy tastes."

So he went into the woods and untied the string to take the little boy out of the bag. But the little boy, as we know, was standing around the table with the other little boys eating cake. And no sooner was the string untied than the house dog jumped out of the bag and sprang right on the Fox, and they had a fight right then and there in the woods.

Pretty soon the dog went trotting down the road. But the Fox did not go home. In fact he did not go anywhere at all.

OEYVIND AND MARIT

Oeyvind was his name. A low barren cliff overhung the house in which he was born, fir and birch looked down on the roof, and wild-cherry strewed flowers over it. Upon this roof there walked about a little goat, which belonged to Oeyvind. He was kept there that he might not go astray, and Oeyvind carried leaves and gra.s.s up to him. One fine day the goat leaped down, and--away to the cliff; he went straight up, and came where he never had been before. Oeyvind did not see him when he came out after dinner, and thought immediately of the fox. He grew hot all over, looked around about, and called, "Killy-killy-killy-goat."

"Bay-ay-ay," said the goat, from the brow of the hill, as he c.o.c.ked his head on one side and looked down.

But at the side of the goat there kneeled a little girl.

"Is it yours, this goat?" she asked.

Oeyvind stood with eyes and mouth wide open, thrust both hands into the breeches he had on, and asked, "Who are you?"

"I am Marit, mother's little one, father's fiddle, the elf in the house, grand-daughter of Ole Nordistuen of the Heide farms, four years old in the autumn, two days after the frost nights, I!"

"Are you really?" he said, and drew a long breath, which he had not dared to do so long as she was speaking.

"Is it yours, this goat?" asked the girl again.

"Ye-es," he said, and looked up.

"I have taken such a fancy to the goat. You will give it to me?"

"No, that I won't."

She lay kicking her legs, and looking down at him, and then she said, "But if I give you a b.u.t.ter-cake for the goat, can I have him then?"

Oeyvind came of poor people, and had eaten b.u.t.ter-cake only once in his life, that was when grandpapa came there, and anything like it he had never eaten before nor since. He looked up at the girl. "Let me see the b.u.t.ter-cake first," said he.

She was not long about it, took out a large cake, which she held in her hand. "Here it is," she said, and threw it down.

"Ow, it went to pieces," said the boy. He gathered up every bit with the utmost care; he could not help tasting the very smallest, and that was so good, he had to taste another, and, before he knew it himself, he had eaten up the whole cake.

"Now the goat is mine," said the girl. The boy stopped with the last bit in his mouth, the girl lay and laughed, and the goat stood by her side, with white breast and dark brown hair, looking down.

"Could you not wait a little while?" begged the boy; his heart began to beat. Then the girl laughed still more, and got up quickly on her knees.

"No, the goat is mine," she said, and threw her arms around its neck, loosened one of her garters, and fastened it around. Oeyvind looked up.

She got up, and began pulling at the goat; it would not follow, and twisted its neck downward to where Oeyvind stood. "Bay-ay-ay," it said.

But she took hold of its hair with one hand, pulled the string with the other, and said gently, "Come, goat, and you shall go into the room and eat out of mother's dish and my ap.r.o.n." And then she sung,--

"Come, boy's goat, Come, mother's calf, Come, mewing cat In snow-white shoes.

Come, yellow ducks, Come out of your hiding-place; Come, little chickens, Who can hardly go; Come, my doves With soft feathers, See, the gra.s.s is wet, But the sun does you good; And early, early is it in summer, But call for the autumn, and it will come."

There stood the boy.

He had taken care of the goat since the winter before, when it was born, and he had never imagined he could lose it; but now it was done in a moment, and he would never see it again.

His mother came up humming from the beach, with wooden pans which she had scoured: she saw the boy sitting with his legs crossed under him on the gra.s.s, crying, and she went up to him.

"What are you crying about?"

"Oh, the goat, the goat!"

"Yes; where is the goat?" asked his mother, looking up at the roof.

"It will never come back again," said the boy.

"Dear me! how could that happen?"

He would not confess immediately.

"Has the fox taken it?"

"Ah, if it only were the fox!"

"Are you crazy?" said his mother; "what has become of the goat?"