said the man, “I can see that you have not disobeyed me. You’re a dear, good little wife.”
Every day, as soon as her husband was gone, the girl took her work into the garden and sat there, knitting or playing with the fish, but she was unhappy because of her sisters.
One morning as she was at work she saw a little lizard without a tail; the tail was lying on the ground beside it. She watched the creature and saw it bite a leaf off a certain plant, turn its head over its back, and touch its body and its tail with the leaf. Instantly tail and body grew together, and the lizard ran off quite merrily.
“Aha,” thought the girl, “now I know what to do!” So she picked the plant, went into the courtyard, put her sisters’ heads on to their respective bodies, touched the necks with the plants, and there were her sisters quite well again. Then she took them upstairs and hid them.
That evening she said to her husband, “I am afraid my mother must be very unhappy. She is old and poor, and now there is no one to work for her or take care of her. Let me go and see her.”
“No,” said the man; “I can’t spare you.”
“Well, then, let me fill a chest with clothes and money, and you shall carry it to her.”
“Very well,” said the man; “have it ready by to-morrow morning.”
So the girl put linen and gold into a chest. Then she made her eldest sister get in, and shut down the lid.
“Now,” she said to her husband, “you must not set down the chest at all: remember, I can see you all the way. Go straight there and back again, for I want you at home.”
The man put the chest on his head and set off. After a time he began to want to put down his burden for a little, and said to himself: —
“My wife can’t possibly see me; there’s this hill between me and her”: and he began to set down the chest.
“Do you think I can’t see you?” a voice said. “Silly man, I can see you everywhere.”
“Oh dear, oh dear,” said the man to himself, “what a clever wife mine is! She can see me even through a hill. And how fond of me she is! She knows what I am doing wherever I am.” So he staggered on to his mother-in-law’s, threw down the box, and went home again.
A little while after the second sister was sent home in the same way, and now the girl began to think how she could get away herself. One evening she said to her husband: —
“I want you to take some more things to my mother. I shall get everything ready to-night. Don’t wake me in the morning before you go, as I shall come to bed very late. I have to make the bread.”
The man went off to bed, and the girl set to work. She made a great doll of dough and put it in her bed; then she put clothes and money into the chest, crept in herself, and pulled down the lid.
The next morning the man got up early. “Wife, wife,” he shouted, “good-bye!”
No answer. “Ah, I forgot, she was up late making bread. She’s a dear little wife, and works very hard.”
So he crept on tiptoe to her bedside, saw the figure under the clothes, and went out as quietly as he had gone in.
Then he took the chest and started. Again he wanted to set down his burden, again the warning voice stopped him, and at last he flung down the box at his mother-in-law’s door, declaring that this was the last he would bring her.
When he got home he called, “Wife! wife!”
Still no answer. “What, is she still asleep? She must be tired”; and he went to shake her. Then he found that there was no wife there, but only a figure of dough, and that he was alone once more in his underground palace.
TASSA
Clementina had enticed me to her cottage with the promise of country beans cooked in country fashion, to be followed by a story under the chestnut woods. So at about four in the afternoon, when the heat of the day was over in the breezy mountain village, I sauntered through the street, past the swarming black-eyed children, and the cheerful, smiling washerwomen busy at the tank under the pump, out on the white road beyond; and, gazing now at the landscape on the left, now at the ever-varying forms of the Apennines before me —
“Ever some new head or breast of them,
Thrusts into view,”
says Browning – now climbing the bank on the right for flowers or mountain-strawberries, I arrived, after half an hour’s stroll, at the little hamlet of Ciecafumo.
There stood the cluster of smoke-blackened cottages, with the large patch of rye, beans, etc. (apparently common property), before them, against a background of magnificent chestnut trees. Passing under a picturesque archway, and crossing a cobbled space which did duty as a street, I pushed open the wooden door of Clementina’s house. Before me was a flight of stairs which might have been washed towards the end of the last century: on the right the kitchen; and, dim in the blue, arching wood-smoke, Clementina, with eyes as bright as ever under her kerchief; and sprightly little Nella, barefooted, and, still more extraordinary, bareheaded.
It was a large, low room, with stone walls and a gaping plank ceiling, which formed also the floor of the room above, all encrusted with the black lichen-like deposit, harder than the stone itself, produced by the smoke of wood-fires. In one corner was a tiny window, and on the same side with it the hearth, with a wooden roof over it in lieu of chimney. The wood-fire, the cat, the red pipkin with the old woman bending over it, formed a pretty interior against the dark shadows of the great stack of brushwood which, with a flight of very rickety stairs, occupied the further end of the room.
“Where do the stairs lead, Nonna?” I asked.
“Oh, those lead into the cat’s rooms. You can go up if you like, but I advise you not to. It’s years since I have been there, and I expect they’re rather dirty.”
It need hardly be said that I did not go up. The beans being now ready, a space was cleared on one of the two tables, which, loaded with most heterogeneous material, were propped up against the wall opposite the fire. Above the tables was the one patch of colour on the black walls – a coloured print or so of saints, a couple of rosaries, and a tiny hanging tin lamp. The old woman spread a coarse, newly-washed table-napkin on the space she had cleared, and placed on it a hunch of bread (brought that morning from the village), one glass, a little bottle of oil, and some salt in a piece of paper. The wicker-covered water-flask was put on the ground beside us; three chairs were produced, and three soup-plates, with brass spoons. Then the beans were divided and dressed with oil and salt, the bread was carved into three parts with a great clasp-knife from the old woman’s pocket, and we made a very excellent and nourishing meal. The one glass did duty for all three of us, being rinsed out with a peculiar jerk on to the stone floor after each had drunk.
“Now the story, Nonna,” said I.
So Clementina took up her knitting, and, locking the door behind us, we went out into the fresh, sweet evening air. We sat down under a huge chestnut tree. A number of little girls came clustering around us, busily engaged in making chestnut-leaf pockets for their wild strawberries and whortle-berries, and the old woman began: —
Once upon a time there was a poor woman who had one daughter. One day, as this daughter was out in the forest getting firewood she struck her axe into a hollow tree. As soon as she had
