FAMILIAR FACES
I Mary, Mary, So Contrary!
II Jane, Jane, Don’t Complain!
III Susan Walker, What a Talker!
When she got to the middle of the stream
I
MARY, MARY, SO CONTRARY!
There was once a farmer who was married to the most contrary wife in the world. Her name was Maya. If he expected Maya to say, “Yes,” she would always say, “No,” and if he expected her to say, “No,” she would always say, “Yes.” If he said the soup was too hot, Maya would instantly insist that it was too cold. She would do nothing that he wanted her to do, and she always insisted on doing everything that he did not want her to do.
Like most contrary people Maya was really very stupid and the farmer after he had been married to her for a few years knew exactly how to manage her.
For instance at Christmas one year he wanted to make a big feast for his friends and neighbors. Did he tell his wife so? Not he! Instead, a few weeks beforehand he remarked casually:
“Christmas is coming and I suppose every one will expect us to have fine white bread. But I don’t think we ought to. It’s too expensive. Black bread is good enough for us.”
“Black bread, indeed!” cried Maya. “Not at all! We’re going to have white bread and you needn’t say any more about it! Black bread at Christmas! To hear you talk people would suppose we are beggars!”
The farmer pretended to be grieved and he said:
“Well, my dear, have white bread if your heart is set on it, but I hope you don’t expect to make any pies.”
“Not make any pies! Just let me tell you I expect to make all the pies I want!”
“Well, now, Maya, if we have pies I don’t think we ought to have any wine.”
“No wine! I like that! Of course we’ll have wine on Christmas!”
The farmer was much pleased but, still pretending to protest, he said:
“Well, if we spend money on wine, we better not expect to buy any coffee.”
“What! No coffee on Christmas! Who ever heard of such a thing! Of course we’ll have coffee!”
“Well, I’m not going to quarrel with you! Get a little coffee if you like, but just enough for you and me for I don’t think we ought to have any guests.”
“What! No guests on Christmas! Indeed and you’re wrong if you think we’re not going to have a houseful of guests!”
The farmer was overjoyed but, still pretending to grumble, he said:
“If you have the house full of people, you needn’t think I’m going to sit at the head of the table, for I’m not!”
“You are, too!” screamed his wife. “That’s exactly where you are going to sit!”
“Maya, Maya, don’t get so excited! I will sit there if you insist. But if I do you mustn’t expect me to pour the wine.”
“And why not? It would be a strange thing if you didn’t pour the wine at your own table!”
“All right, all right, I’ll pour it! But you mustn’t expect me to taste it beforehand.”
“Of course you’re going to taste it beforehand!”
This was exactly what the farmer wanted his wife to say. So you see by pretending to oppose her at every turn he was able to have the big Christmas party that he wanted and he was able to feast to his heart’s content with all his friends and relatives and neighbors.
Time went by and Maya grew more and more contrary if such a thing were possible. Summer came and the haymaking season. They were going to a distant meadow to toss hay and had to cross an angry little river on a footbridge made of one slender plank.
The farmer crossed in safety, then he called back to his wife:
“Walk very carefully, Maya, for the plank is not strong!”
“I will not walk carefully!” the wife declared.
She flung herself on the plank with all her weight and when she got to the middle of the stream she jumped up and down just to show her husband how contrary she could be. Well, the plank broke with a snap, Maya fell into the water, the current carried her off, and she was drowned!
Her husband, seeing what had happened, ran madly upstream shouting:
“Help! Help!”
The haymakers heard him and came running to see what was the matter.
“My wife has fallen into the river!” he cried, “and the current has carried her body away!”
“What ails you?” the haymakers said. “Are you mad? If the current has carried your wife away, she’s floating downstream, not upstream!”
“Any other woman would float downstream,” the farmer said. “Yes! But you know Maya! She’s so contrary she’d float upstream every time!”
“That’s true,” the haymakers said, “she would!”
So all afternoon the farmer searched upstream for his wife’s body but he never found it.
When night came he went home and had a good supper of all the things he liked to eat which Maya would never let him have.
They were so busy eating and drinking
II
JANE, JANE, DON’T COMPLAIN!
There was once a man who was poor and lazy and he had a wife who was even worse. Her name was Jenny. Jenny was so lazy that it was an effort for her to lift one foot after the other. And in addition to her laziness she was an everlasting complainer. “Oh!” she used to grunt in the morning, “I wish we didn’t have to get up!” and “Oh!” she used to groan at night, “I wish we didn’t have to take our shoes off before going to bed!”
One day when they were both out in the forest collecting faggots, Jenny said:
“I don’t see why we’re not rich! I don’t see why the King should live at his ease while we have to grub for everything we get! I just hate work!”
Of course the trouble both with Jenny and her husband was not that they worked but that they didn’t work. It was because they didn’t that they had so much time to think about it.
“Drat it all!” Jenny went on, whining, “Adam and Eve are to blame for all our misfortunes! If they hadn’t disobeyed God’s commandment and eaten that apple, we’d all be living in the Garden of Eden to this day! It’s all their fault that we have to moil and toil and hurry and scurry!”
“Yes,” the man agreed, “it is, especially Eve’s. Of course Adam was to blame, too, for he should have controlled his wife better. But Eve was the more to blame. If I had been Adam I shouldn’t have allowed her to touch the apple in the first place.”
Now it happened that the King who was out hunting that day overheard this conversation.
“Ha!” he thought to himself, “I’ve a great mind to teach these two people a lesson!”
He pushed aside the bushes that had hidden him from them and said:
“Good day to you both! I have just heard your complaints and I, too, think it very hard that you should be poor while others are rich. I tell you what I’ll do: I’ll take you both home with me to the castle and maintain you in ease and luxury provided you obey me in just one thing.”
Jenny and her husband agreed to this eagerly and just as they were the King took them home with him to the castle. He lodged them in a room with golden furniture, he gave them fine clothes to wear, and for food he had them served the choicest delicacies in the world.
As they sat eating their first royal meal, he came in to them carrying in his hands a covered dish of silver. He put the dish down in the center of the table.
“Now, my friends,” he said, “I promised to maintain you in this ease and luxury provided you obeyed me in one thing. You see this silver dish. I forbid you ever to lift the cover. If you disobey me, that moment I shall take from you your fine clothes and send you back to your poverty and misery.”
With that the King left them and they stuffed themselves to their hearts’ content with the delicate foods set before them.
They were so busy, eating and drinking and admiring themselves in their fine clothes, that for the first day they didn’t give the covered dish a thought. The second day the wife noticed it and said:
“That’s the thing we’re not to touch. Well, for my part I don’t want to touch it. I don’t want to do anything but eat and sleep and try on my pretty new clothes.”
By the third day they had eaten so much and so steadily that they were no longer hungry and when they lay down on the big soft bed they no longer fell instantly asleep.
“Dear me,” Jenny began whining, “I don’t know what’s the matter with this food! It doesn’t taste as good as it used to! Maybe the cook has grown careless! I think we ought to complain to the King. I’m beginning to feel very uncomfortable and I haven’t any appetite at all! I wonder what’s in that covered dish. Perhaps it’s something to eat, something perfectly delicious! I’ve half a mind to lift the cover and see.”
“Now just you leave that silver dish alone!” the man growled. He, too, had been eating too much and was feeling peevish. “Don’t you remember what the King said?”
“Pooh!” cried Jenny. “What do I care what the King said! I think he was just poking fun at us telling us we mustn’t lift the cover of that silver dish. After all a dish is a dish and it’s no crime to lift a cover even if it is made of silver!”
With that Jenny jumped up and before her husband could stop her she lifted the forbidden cover. Instantly a little white mouse hopped out of the silver dish and scurried away.
“Oh!” Jenny screamed, dropping the cover with a great clatter.
The King who was in an adjoining chamber heard the noise and came in.
“So!” he said, “you have done the one thing that I told you not to do! You haven’t been here three days and although you’ve had everything that heart could wish for yet you couldn’t obey me in this one little matter!”
“Your Majesty,” the man said, “it was my wife who did it, not I.”
“No matter,” the King said, “you, too, are to blame. If you had restrained her it wouldn’t have happened.”
Then he called his servants and had them strip off the fine clothes and dress the couple again in their old rags.
“Now,” he said as he drove them from the castle gates, “never again blame Adam and Eve for the misfortunes which you bring upon yourselves!”
They carried home the treasure on their backs
III
SUSAN WALKER, WHAT A TALKER!
There was once a man whose wife was an awful talker. Her name was Susanna. No matter how important it was to keep a matter quiet, if Susanna knew about it, she just had to talk. She was always running to the neighbors and exclaiming:
“Oh, my dear, have you heard so and so?”
Her husband was an industrious fellow. He set nets in the river, he snared birds in the forest, and he worked at any odd jobs that came along.
It happened one day while he was out in the forest that he found a buried treasure.
“Ah!” he thought to himself, “now I can buy a little farm that will keep me and Susanna comfortable the rest of our days!”
He started home at once to tell his wife the good fortune that had befallen them. He had almost reached home when he stopped, suddenly realizing that the first thing Susanna would do would be to spread the news broadcast throughout the village. Then of course the government would get wind of his find and presently officers of the law would come and confiscate the entire treasure.
“That would never do,” he told himself. “I must think out some plan whereby I can let Susanna know about the treasure without risking the loss of it.”
He puzzled over the matter for a long time and at last hit upon something that he thought might prove successful.
In his nets that day he had caught a pike and in one of his snares he had found a grouse. He went back now to the river and put the bird in the fishnet, and then he went to the woods and put the fish in the snare. This done he went home and at once told Susanna about the buried treasure which was going to be the means of making their old age comfortable.
She flew at once into great excitement.
“La! La! A buried treasure! Whoever heard of such luck! Oh, how all the neighbors will envy us when they hear about it! I can hardly wait to tell them!”
“But they mustn’t hear!” her husband told her. “You don’t want the officers of the law coming and taking it all from us, do you?”
“That would be a nice how-do-you-do!” Susanna cried. “What! Come and take our treasure that you found yourself in the forest?”
“Yes, my dear, that’s exactly what they’d do if once they heard about it.”
“Well, you can depend upon it, my dear husband, not a soul will hear about it from me!”
She shook her head vigorously and repeated this many times and then tried to slip out of the house on some such excuse as needing to borrow a cup of meal from a neighbor.
But the man insisted on her staying beside him all evening. She kept remembering little errands that would take her to the houses of various neighbors but each time she attempted to leave her husband called her back. At last he got her safely to bed.
Early next morning, before she had been able to talk to any one, he said:
“Now, my dear, come with me to the forest and help me to carry home the treasure. On the way we’d better see if we’ve got anything in the nets and the snares.”
They went first to the river and when the man had lifted his nets they found a grouse which he made Susanna reach over and get. Then in the woods he let her make the discovery of a pike in one of the snares. She was all the while so excited about the treasure that she hadn’t mind enough left to be surprised that a bird should be caught in a fishnet and a fish in a birdsnare.
Well, they found the precious treasure and they stowed it away in two sacks which they carried home on their backs. On the way home Susanna could scarcely refrain from calling out to every passerby some hint of their good fortune. As they passed the house of Helmi, her dearest crony, she said to her husband:
“My dear, won’t you just wait here a moment while I run in and get a drink of water?”
“You mustn’t go in just now,” her husband said. “Don’t you hear what’s going on?”
There was the sound of two dogs fighting and yelping in the kitchen.
“Helmi is getting a beating from her husband,” the man said. “Can’t you hear her crying? This is no time for an outsider to appear.”
All that day and all that night he kept so close to Susanna that the poor woman wasn’t able to exchange a word with another human being.
Early next morning she escaped him and ran as fast as her legs could carry her to Helmi’s house.
“My dear,” she began all out of breath, “such a wonderful treasure as we’ve found but I’ve sworn never to whisper a word about it for fear the government should hear of it! I should have stopped and told you yesterday but your husband was beating you—”
“What’s that?” cried Helmi’s husband who came in just then and caught the last words.
“It’s the treasure we’ve found!”
“The treasure? What are you talking about? Begin at the beginning.”
“Well, my old man and me we started out yesterday morning and first we went to the river to see if there was anything in the nets. We found a grouse—”
“A grouse?”
“Yes, we found a grouse in the nets. Then we went to the forest and looked in the snares and in one we found a pike.”
“A pike!”
“Yes. Then we went and dug up the treasure and put it in two sacks and you could have seen us yourself carrying it home on our backs but you were too busy beating poor Helmi.”
“I beating poor Helmi! Ho! Ho! Ho! That is a good one! I was busy beating my wife while you were getting birds out of fishnets and fish out of snares! Ho! Ho! Ho!”
“It’s so!” Susanna cried. “It is so! You were so beating Helmi! And you sounded just like two dogs fighting! And we did so carry home the treasure!”
But Helmi’s husband only laughed the harder. That afternoon when he went to the Inn he was still laughing and when the men there asked him what was so funny he told them Susanna’s story and soon the whole village was laughing at the foolish woman who found birds in fishnets and fish in snares and who thought that two yelping dogs were Helmi and her husband fighting.
As for the treasure that wasn’t taken any more seriously than the grouse and the pike.
“It must have been two sacks of turnips they carried home on their backs!” the village people decided.
The husband of course said nothing and Susanna, too, was soon forced to keep quiet for now whenever she tried to explain people only laughed.