disappeared from the spindle as if blown away. Tell me, what does it mean?”
So Betushka confessed and told her mother all she knew about the beautiful maiden.
“Oh,” cried her mother in amazement, “that was a wood maiden! At noon and midnight the wood maidens dance. It is well you are not a little boy or she might have danced you to death! But they are often kind to little girls and sometimes make them rich presents. Why didn’t you tell me? If I hadn’t grumbled, I could have had yarn enough to fill the house!”
Betushka thought of the little basket and wondered if there might be something under the leaves. She took out the spindle and unspun flax and looked in once more.
“Mother!” she cried. “Come here and see!”
Her mother looked and clapped her hands. The birch leaves were all turned to gold!
Betushka reproached herself bitterly: “She told me not to look inside until I got home, but I didn’t obey.”
“It’s lucky you didn’t empty the whole basket,” her mother said.
The next morning she herself went to look for the
