THE RING WITH TWELVE SCREWS.
THERE lived in a village a son with his mother, and the mother was a very old woman. The son was called Ivan the Fool. They lived in a poor little cottage with one window, and in great poverty. Such was their poverty that besides dry bread they ate almost nothing, and sometimes they had not even the dry bread. The mother would sit and spin, and Ivan the Fool would lie on the stove, roll in the ashes, and never wipe his nose. His mother would say to him time and again: “Ivanushka, thou art sitting there with thy nose unwiped. Why not go somewhere, even to the public-house? Some kind man may come along and take thee to work. Thou wouldst have even a bit of bread, while at home here we have nothing to keep the life in us.”
“Very well, I’ll go,” said Ivan. He rose up and went to the public-house. On the way a man met him.
“Where art thou going, Ivan?”
“I am going to hire out to work.”
“Come, work for me; I’ll give thee such and such wages, and other things too.”
Ivan agreed. He went to work.
The man had a dog with whelps; one of the whelps pleased Ivan greatly, and he trained it. A year passed, and the time came to pay wages for the work. The man was giving Ivan money, but he answered: “I need not thy money; give me that whelp of thine that I trained.”
The man was glad that he had not to pay money, and gave the whelp.
Ivan went home; and when his mother found what he had done, she began to cry, saying: “All people are people, but thou art a fool; we had nothing to eat, and now there is another life to support.”