Page - 65 - in The Forest Farm - Tales of the Austrian Tyrol

None the less, we petted and fondled the snow-white kid. It stood up and put its fore-feet on our knees and looked at us roguishly with its squinny eyes, as though it were mocking us for not being rich enough to buy it between the lot of us. It tittered and bleated at us like anything and showed us its snow- white teeth. It was hardly three months old and already had a beard; while I and Jakoberle were seven years old and more and had to make ourselves a beard of grey tree-moss when we wanted one. And the kid ate even that off our faces! In spite of that, each one of us was much fonder of the little four-footed creature than of all the others put together! And so I cast about for some other means of rejoicing my cousin with the gift of the animal. When father came home from the fields that afternoon, we all swarmed about him and tugged at his clothes. “Father,” I asked, “is it true that ‘The early morn has gold in its mouth’?” This being one of his own proverbs, he answered promptly: “Indeed it is true.” “Father!” the four of us immediately cried together. “How early must we get up every day for you to give us the white kid?” Father did not seem to jump at this business view of the matter. But, when he heard of our proposal to give the kid to Cousin Jok, he bargained that we should get up half an hour earlier every morning and thereupon made the dear little beast over to us. The kid was ours. We resolved with one accord to creep out of bed next morning before cousin’s time for getting up—and that was saying a great deal —to tie a red ribbon round the kid’s neck and to take it to old Jok’s bedside before he thrust his body into his long grey fur, which he wore winter and summer alike. This was our sacred intention. But, next day, when mother called us and we opened our eyelids, the sun shone so fiercely into our eyes that we had to shut them again until she covered the window with her kerchief. Now there was no excuse left. But cousin had gone out long before, taking his fur with him. He had driven the sheep and goats to the meadow in the valley where he always tended them and where he sat all day smiling and chewing his pipe. And the little animals nibbled busily at the dewy grasses and shrubs and skipped and gambolled merrily on the sunny meadow. The little kid was among them. And had nobody reminded Jok that this was