Then the father said to the mother she should go and rest, while he sat down at the child's bedside and tried to narrate something.
At last there came a day when all the stories he ever knew were at an end, while the little girl still entreated for one. The father looked in his girl's big, starlike eyes and saw that she could not sleep. He looked also at the mother, who was worried out of her senses by daily work; and now sat mending the baby's socks. It was evident some story ought to be told. But what story? What about?
The father looked around. A china cup was standing on the table. It was half-broken, and he could not help thinking that it had had a trying life. It had surely had its story. Well, what kind of a story was it?
And after having pondered a little, the father told to his girl the story of the cup, as he imagined it, and as you have found it in this very little book.
When he finished the little girl rose in her bed, with her starlike eyes shining more than usual, and asked: 'Where did you get that story, father? Did you read it somewhere?'
'No; I just told it out of my head.'
Then the little girl clasped her little hands around her father's neck, kissed him most enthusiastically, and seemed to be very happy.
Since that time father heard only too often the little girl ask him: 'Father, do tell me some tale of your own.'
And so he did. But as he repeated his stories again and again he now and then altered them, as he could not remember everything as he told it the first time. And if the alterations were happy, the little girl was pleased, but if he omitted anything, she said: 'You told it differently the other day,' and would not be happy until he recalled all the exact words and details of his best narrative.
Then it became clear that the father should write his stories down. After having written some new story he now read it to the girl with a pair of stars instead of eyes, and sometimes she most emphatically objected to some turn of the story.