Moni the Goat Boy, and Other Stories

by Johanna Spyri

Often when the boy's whistle was heard at night in the stable, the shed, or the henhouse, the farmer, hearing it, would say: "Do send the boy to bed. His workday should be over by this time."

But the wife would answer: "Work never hurts any one; he gets sleep enough, and his whistling shows that he is not unhappy."

Then the farmer was satisfied, and his wife was glad that she could have her own way with the boy, and that he was cheerful and content. When winter came she proposed that they keep him, for she would have work for him when he was not in school, and when spring came and they had to take laborers she would have extra work in the kitchen and would find the boy very useful. The work of carrying meals to the field hands three times a day was alone worth keeping him for.

In his various duties the boy was often with Gretchen, for she had many of the same tasks as he had, and the two estates ran side by side. In the summer the children were sent to the fields to glean after the harvesters. They had discovered that it was much pleasanter to do this work together, first in one field, then in the other, than to do it alone. So it was with many of their tasks, and they were much together. But they were happiest when autumn came and they were sent to pasture with the herds. Renti had become so familiar with the life at Lindenhof that he knew every cow by looks and disposition; he had become so well acquainted with the hens that he could pick out any egg and tell just where and when it had been laid. It took close watching to keep track of the eggs, for the hens liked to lay in secret places. Every creature, large or small, that belonged to the farm was more familiar to Renti than to the farmer himself, or to any hired man that they had ever had on the place.

At The Alders life went on in the same quiet, orderly way as at Lindenhof. In fact, there had always been great similarity in the manner of running the two farms. In the stables there were always eight cows, and if either of the farmers had seen fit to have nine, then there would have been no sleep for the other until he, too, had nine cows in his stall; for it was an old custom to have everything alike on the two farms.

The farmers were the best of neighbors, however, and there never was a thought of unpleasant rivalry between them. Each was content to have everything remain just as it had always been in the fathers' and grandfathers' and great-grandfathers' time.

It had happened, strangely enough, that on both occasions when there was a christening party at Lindenhof there was one on the same Sunday at The Alders,—with this difference, however, that the babies christened at Lindenhof were both girls, while at The Alders they were boys. Hannes had come first, and then, a year later, Uli,—the boys being now in their twentieth and nineteenth years. But the most important difference between the two households was, that while the number of children at Lindenhof remained at two, a third child had come to the other family years afterward. A little girl had made a late but by no means unwelcome appearance, proving a great joy to the family as the years went on. She was a winsome, happy child and did credit to the careful training of her parents, for they were proper people, both of the opinion that their first care should be to educate their children to a decent, orderly life.

Regularly on Sundays the family might all be seen going to church together,—father and mother in advance, with little Gretchen between them, and Hannes and Uli behind, all in their Sunday clothes and all looking so neat and honest that it warmed the pastor's heart to see them filing into church.

As little Gretchen grew along in this well-ordered life she won the heart of every one; for she was pleasant and courteous at all times and sweet to look upon, with her bright, laughing eyes, blue as the cornflowers, and her long, blond braids like the golden grain above them.