THE WONDERFUL STORY
“Ah, little mother, little mother, come, tell me a pretty fairy tale!”
“Well, would you like to hear the story of the Black Bear and the Ram? It is a very sad story.”
“Oh, yes, yes!”
“I didn’t say ‘Oh, yes, yes,’ but ‘Would you like to hear the tale of the Black Bear and the Ram?’”
“Yes, indeed, only tell it quick!”
“I didn’t say ‘Yes, indeed, only tell it quick,’ but ‘Would you like to hear the tale of the Black Bear and the Ram?’”
“O dear mother, if you don’t tell it soon I shall begin to cry!”
“Did I not tell you it was a sad story? However, I did not say ‘O dear mother, if you don’t tell it soon I shall begin to cry,’ but ‘Would you like to hear the tale of the Black Bear and the Ram?’”
“Would you like to hear the tale of the Black Bear and the Ram?”
“There, you see, you know most of it already, and there is only the end:
“The Black Bear and the Ram,
The Ram and the Black Bear,
They couldn’t endure each other,
And so my story ends there.”
Done already?
The little boy listened with a very sober face. Finally he said:
“Why did you use to tell mother that story?”
“Because that is the way to silence teasing children,” replied the other grandmother. “They used to do just the way it tells in the story in my great-grandmother’s time.”
Again there was a pause. The knitting-needles clicked fast.
“Am I a teasing child?” asked the little boy at last.
“No, you are not, bless your little heart!” said the other grandmother. “Mother’s-mother likes to tell you stories. Only you should not sit quiet too long. You ought to play now.”
The little boy went close to the other grandmother’s side, and looking up into her face, he said very coaxingly:
“But I am going away to-morrow, little mother’s-mother. Won’t you tell me one more story?”
“Run out and see if the sun is setting,” said the other grandmother. “If it has not yet gone down I will tell you another story.”
The little boy ran out in the greatest hurry. The other grandmother’s house was upstairs and it had no court—that was why she kept neither cow nor fowl. So he had to run down the dark stone stairway, and he was in such haste that he fell down the last two steps. But he picked himself up and ran out. There at the far end of the long street was the sun, still quite above the clouds that would wrap him up in bed by and by.
The little boy ran upstairs, breathless. “He is up, mother’s-mother! He hasn’t gone to bed yet! The story, please!”
And the other grandmother told about