St. Peter and the Two Women
THE RICH WOMAN AND
THE POOR WOMAN
N a cold winter night, thousands of years ago, St. Peter took one of his occasional walks on earth. Towards nightfall he knocked at a rich peasant’s door. The farmer’s wife was busy making pancakes in her cosy kitchen. Her little chubby baby was watching her as she poured the batter into the frying-pan. She spied the stranger through the window, and said to herself, “This fellow is attracted by the good smell, but I do not waste my pancakes on strangers.” She sent the beggar away, wishing him God-speed.
He went on his way, and presently arrived at a mud cabin, where a poor widow lived with her six children. On hearing the old man begging her to have pity on him for God’s sake, she opened the door and bade him stay the night in her little hut. “Night is falling,” she said; “it is bitterly cold, stay with us, and you shall have my bedroom. I will doze in a chair near the fire.” The stranger gratefully accepted her offer, and after having supped, retired to bed.
Before leaving the next day, he thanked the good woman, and said to her, “Listen, little mother: as you welcomed me in your house, I give you a wish; ask anything you like and you shall have it.” The good woman thought at once of an unfinished roll of cloth which her dead husband was weaving a little before his death. Without further hesitation, she answered, “My good man, as you are so kind and so powerful, grant that the work which I begin the first thing in the morning may continue all day.” “It shall be as you wish,” said the stranger, as he bade her good-bye. Her six children accompanied him to the outskirts of the village, where they bade him God-speed.
