CHAPTER XII
THE SHEEP-PLAY
The dinner was over, the plates washed and put away, and grandmother was busy with her spinning. The little boy was amusing himself with some bits of wool that had fallen to the floor, for everything is a plaything to a Russian child. The bits of wool were sheep, and a wooden stool was a sheepfold, and a bit of fuel that had fallen when grandmother covered up the fire was the sheep-dog. It was a very nice play.
The room was very quiet, for, though the little boy talked all the time to his sheep and his dog, he had been taught to talk softly in his plays, as all children must do when a whole family lives in one room. He talked very softly indeed when he saw that grandmother had leaned her head against the straight back of her rush-bottomed chair and was taking a little nap. Presently the distaff fell from her lap to the floor and awakened her.
“Why, I must have been asleep!” she said, and went on with her spinning.
At last the sheep, which had been wandering away upon the hills that rose between the hollows in the clay floor, had all been discovered by the sheep-dog and herded, one by one, in the fold. The little boy was tired of playing, and he sat on the stool to listen to his grandmother’s singing. Grandmother was always singing when she was not telling stories to the little boy.
“Why can’t you tell stories while you spin, as well as when you knit?” asked the little boy.
“Oh, that isn’t the way!” said the grandmother. “When it is dark and I take my knitting I can tell a story, but not now. You’d better go home till it begins to grow dark; then come, and we’ll see what story little grandmother can tell.”
The winter day was very short, and it was not long before the little boy came back. Grandmother was still spinning, but she laid aside her distaff and spindle, took her knitting down from the shelf, and began the story of