Moni the Goat Boy, and Other Stories

by Johanna Spyri

When the farmer spoke to his wife about the matter, she exclaimed: "Thank goodness! Now I shall be rid of those clumping feet in my kitchen. When I have the boy alone with me I feel as though I were in heaven."

But she had not yet satisfied herself in regard to the boy's companionship. So one evening when the other servants had gone to bed and the farmer was busy about his last duties in the barn, she called to the boy to come and sit down beside her at the table; she wanted to have a serious talk with him.

"Now be honest, Renti, and tell me where you used to spend your time when you ran away and went tramping. Tell me just exactly who was with you."

Renti was a little frightened to have his evil days thus brought up before him, and he said in a meek, penitent voice: "I always ran straight home, back here to Lindenhof; and then I would sit out behind the barn, or I would go into the shed sometimes, when no one was looking, and would coax the hens to me. I used to stay with them a long time, and sometimes I climbed up in the barn where I could look down on the cows."

The woman scrutinized the boy closely without speaking. She knew he was telling the truth. Finally she said, "But, Renti, why did you never come in to see me, if you felt so?"

Renti hung his head and said: "On Sundays, when I might have come, I had been running away all the week, because I could not keep away from here; and then I thought you must be angry with me."

Now the woman began to understand her little friend. It was out of pure devotion to her and her house that the boy had fallen into evil ways. She must make amends to him; she was touched by the discovery she had made. What a load he had taken from her! She need fear no bad companions, no tempters, who would come after the boy to lure him away. Trickery and hidden malice were out of the question. And now she might dismiss forever the dread of having to send the boy away, thus letting the woman of Stony Acre triumph over her and giving the other women a chance to express sympathy. Best of all, though, was the thought that she was going to have the nimble, happy, devoted little fellow to serve her again. She had always liked him and now felt more attached to him than ever.

"Renti," she said at last, with a voice full of emotion, "you must have no more fears. As long as I am at Lindenhof you shall have a home here."

A happier boy than Renti was that night could not have been found in all the parish of Buschweil.

And the farmer was so glad at the turn things had taken, and the way in which his work was being done, that he would stop in the fields to tell people all about his wife's wonderful achievement in making a model boy out of Renti. The hired man, who had always found Andrew too clumsy to be of much assistance, heard with satisfaction that the little fellow was now to be taken instead, and he went about telling people that his mistress had but to look at a boy and she could do anything with him.