My task is accomplished. Good-bye!” said the spark—
And, giving one flash, he went out in the dark.
Theophania
Adelaide Phillpotts
Peter-Wise was a clever young peasant who lived in a little village that looked like a dimple in the hillside. He owned fifty mooing cows, one hundred baaing sheep, forty grunting pigs, two hundred clacking fowls—and a bellowing bull. And he prophesied that in ten years’ time he would have doubled these numbers. But with all this wealth, Peter-Wise lacked the most important creature of all—a wife. Without a wife, what is the use of fifty cows, one hundred sheep, forty pigs, two hundred fowls—and a bull?
Now Peter-Wise declared that he would not marry a maiden who was less than seventeen or more than twenty-two years old, and in the village there were only six girls between these ages who were not already betrothed or wed. Of these six, therefore—all of whom, being brought up on cream and honey and wheaten bread and saffron cake and wild strawberries, were bonny and plump and fair to see—Peter-Wise decided to choose the cleverest, who, nevertheless, must be just the least bit less clever than he was. So, to discover which was the cleverest, for, busy man that he was with his cows and his sheep and his pigs and his fowls—and his bull, he had not the time to woo each separately, he resolved to set them three tasks: one to try their fingers; one to try their brains; one to try their imaginations; and to marry her who succeeded best in the three.
“I WILL MARRY WHICHEVER OF YOU CAN PERFORM THREE TASKS”
So Peter-Wise summoned Mary and Sally and Polly and Minnie and Lucy, and Theophania, called Tiffany for short—these were the names of the girls—and said to them: