But as she was not fierce but rather sour to me
in her daily wont in my youngest days so also she was never tender,
or ever kissed me or caressed me, for as little as I was.
And I loved her naught, nor did it ever come into my mind that I
should love her, though I loved a white goat of ours and deemed
it dear and lovely; and afterwards other things also that came
to me from time to time, as a squirrel that I saved from a weasel,
and a jackdaw that fell from a tall ash-tree nigh our house
before he had learned how to fly, and a house-mouse that would
run up and down my hand and arm, and other such-like things;
and shortly I may say that the wild things, even to the conies
and fawns loved me, and had but little fear of me, and made me happy,
and I loved them.
"Further, as I grew up, the woman set me to do such work as I
had strength for as needs was; for there was no man dwelt anigh
us and seldom did I ever see man or woman there, and held
no converse with any, save as I shall tell thee presently:
though now and again a man or a woman passed by; what they were I
knew not, nor their whence and whither, but by seeing them I came
to know that there were other folk in the world besides us two.
Nought else I knew save how to spin, and to tend our goats
and milk them, and to set snares for birds and small deer:
though when I had caught them, it irked me sore to kill them,
and I had let them go again had I not feared the carline.
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