I. BEAUTY AND HER SISTERS
There was once a rich merchant who had six children, three sons and three daughters. He loved them more than he loved all his riches, so that he was always seeking to make them happy and wise.
The daughters were very pretty; but the youngest was more than pretty—she was beautiful. As every one called her Little Beauty when she was a child, and she became more lovely every year, the name grew up with her, so that she had no other than just—Beauty.
Now Beauty was as good as she was beautiful. But her elder sisters were ill-natured and jealous of her, and could not bear to hear her called Beauty. They were very proud, too, of their father’s riches, and put on great airs. They would not visit the daughters of other merchants, but were always following persons who had titles, Lady This and Duchess That. They laughed at Beauty, who lived quietly at home with their father.
The father was so rich that many great merchants wished to marry his daughters. But the two eldest always said that they could never think of marrying anybody below a duke, or at the least an earl. As for Beauty, she thanked her lovers for thinking so well of her, but as she was still very young, she wished to live a few years longer with her father.
Now it happened that the merchant all at once lost his great wealth. Nothing was left but one small house in the country, and there the poor man told his children they must now go, and earn their daily bread.
The two eldest daughters said they need not go, for they had plenty of lovers who would be glad enough to marry them, even though they had lost their fortune. But they were wrong, for their lovers would not look at them now, and jeered at them in their trouble, because they had been so proud before.
Yet every one felt sorry for Beauty. Several gentlemen who loved her begged her still to let them marry her, though she had not a penny. Beauty refused, and said she could not leave her father now that trouble had come upon him.
So the family went to live in the small house in the country. There the merchant and his three sons ploughed and sowed the fields, and worked hard all day. Beauty rose at four o’clock every morning, put the house in order, and got breakfast for the whole family. It was very hard at first, for no one helped her. But every day it grew easier to work, and Beauty grew stronger and rosier. When her work was done, she could read, or play on her harp, or sit at her spinning-wheel, singing as she spun.
As for her two sisters, they were idle and unhappy, and became quite helpless. They never got up till ten o’clock. They spent the day moping and fretting, because they no longer had fine clothes to wear, and could not go to fine parties. They jeered at Beauty, and said that she was nothing but a servant-girl after all, to like that kind of living. But Beauty did not mind them, and lived on cheerfully.
They had been in the country a year, when one morning the merchant had a letter. It brought the news that a ship laden with rich goods belonging to him had not been lost after all, and had just come into port. The two sisters were half wild with joy, for now they could soon leave the farm-house, and go back to the gay city.
When their father was about to go to the port to settle his business there, they begged him to bring back all manner of fine things for them.
Then the merchant asked Beauty:—
“And what shall I bring you, Beauty?” for Beauty had yet asked nothing.
“Why, since you ask me, dear father, I should like you to bring me a rose, for none grow in these parts.” Now Beauty did not care so very much for a rose, but she did not like to seem to blame her sisters, or to appear better than they, by saying that she did not wish for anything.
The good man set off; but all was not as he had hoped. The ship had come in, but there was a dispute about the cargo. He went to law, and it ended in his turning back poorer than when he left his home.