They say there was once a husband and a wife; but I don't mean that
they were husband and wife of each other. The husband had lost his
wife, and the wife had lost her husband, and each had one little
daughter. The husband sent his daughter to the wife to be brought up
along with her own daughter, and as the girl came every morning to
be trained and instructed, the wife used to send a message back by
her every evening, saying, 'Why doesn't your father marry me? then
we should all live together, and you would no longer have this weary
walk to take.'
The father, however, did not see it in the same light; but the teacher
[39] continued sending the same message. In short, [40] at last she
carried her point, having previously given a solemn promise to him
that Maria, his little girl, should be always as tenderly treated as
her own.
Not many months elapsed, however, before she began to show herself a
true stepmother. After treating Maria with every kind of harshness, she
at last sent her out into the Campagna to tend the cow, so as to keep
her out of sight of her father, and estrange him from her. Maria had
to keep the cow's stall clean with fresh litter every day; sometimes
she had to take the cow out to grass, and watch that it only grazed
over the right piece of land; at other times she had to go out and
cut grass for the cow to eat. All this was work enough for one so
young; but Maria was a kind-hearted girl, and grew fond of her cow,
so that it became a pleasure to her to attend to it.
When the cruel stepmother saw this she was annoyed to find her so
light-hearted over her work, and to vex her more gave her a great
heap of hemp to spin. It was in vain that Maria reminded her she had
never been taught to spin; the only answer she got was, 'If you don't
bring it home with you to-night all properly spun you will be finely
punished;' and Maria knew to her cost what that meant.
When Maria went out into the Campagna that day she was no longer
light-hearted; and as she littered down the stall she stroked the
cow fondly, and said to her, as she had no one else to complain to,
'Vaccarella! Vaccarella! what shall I do? I have got all this hemp
to spin, and I never learnt spinning. Yet if I don't get through it
somehow I shall get sadly beaten to-night. Dear little cow, tell me
what to do!'
But the cow was an enchanted cow, [41] and when she heard Maria cry
she turned round and said quickly and positively:--
Throw it on to the horns of me,
And go along, cut grass for me! [42]
Maria did as she was told, went out and cut a good basketful of grass,
and imagine her delight on coming back with it to find all the whole
lot of hemp beautifully spun.
The surprise of the stepmother was still greater than hers, at
finding that she had got through her task so easily, for she had
given her enough to have occupied an ordinary person a week. Next
day, therefore, she determined to vex her with a more difficult task,
and gave her a quantity of spun hemp [43] to weave into a piece of
fine cloth. Maria's pleadings were as fruitless as before, and once
more she went to tell her tale of woe to her 'dear little cow.'