XX. Trinity-Monday So Born, So Die The Enchanted Lambs The Knot-Grass XXI. Threshing-Time "The Three Eels" XXII. The Korowai Morning-Dew XXIII. The Wedding "Young Neverfull" The Basil-Plant XXIV. After the Wedding Steelpacha THE RUSSIAN GRANDMOTHER'S WONDER-TALES CHAPTER I THE LITTLE BOY AND THE GRANDMOTHER The little boy's father was starosta, that is, Elder of the village, and the house the little boy lived in was grander than any other, on whichever side of the long street you might look. For it had two rooms opening into the court, and all the other houses, even that of the pop, who said Mass in the church on Sunday, had only one. And this grand house was not crowded like the other houses, where the grandparents and the parents and all the married sons and their wives and children lived in the one room. The starosta was not a bolshak, or head of a family, of the old-fashioned sort. He did not consider that he had a right to rule his children like a despot and make them work for him, however old they might be, as many of the fathers in the village did. He even approved of young people setting up housekeeping by themselves. Therefore, though some of the older bolshaks shook their heads and said harm would come of it, when the little boy's elder brother married he permitted him to have a house of his own. It was at the far end of the village. Thus, in the little boy's house there were only the grandmother, the father and mother, the three daughters, the half-grown son, and the little boy. They were not at all crowded, you see, for they had two rooms. The cowherd woman and the two moujiks who helped the starosta on the land, slept, of course, in the stalls with the cattle under the shed that went around three sides of the court. In their warm sheepskin coats, made with the wool outside, they would not have been at all cold, even if the cows beside which they slept had not kept them warm. The family always slept warm, too, for father, mother, and all the children slept on the great tile stove which occupied the centre of the larger room, and in this stove the fire never went entirely out. The grandmother did not sleep on this stove, however. The starosta greatly honored his old mother, and to her he gave the second room in the house for herself alone. She had a stove all to herself, and slept on it all alone, except when the little boy ran away from the great room and cuddled down beside his grandmother for the night. She did not tell him stories then, for night is the time for sleeping, and grandmother was tired after a long day in the fields. But on rainy days, when the starosta would not permit his old mother to do field work, grandmother would sit at home and spin, and then for happy times!