Moni the Goat-Boy | Page 2

came the goat-boy leaping along, and singing his song to the very end:
"And in winter I am happy, For weeping is in vain, And, besides, the glad springtime Will soon come again."
Then he sounded a frightful yodel and immediately with his flock stood right before the ladies, for with his bare feet he leaped as nimbly and lightly as his little goats.
"I wish you good evening!" he said as he looked gayly at the two ladies, and would have continued on his way. But the goat-boy with the merry eyes pleased the ladies.
"Wait a minute," said Paula. "Are you the goat-boy of Fideris? Do the goats belong to the village below?"
"Yes, to be sure!" was the reply.
"Do you go up there with them every day?"
"Yes, surely."
"Is that so? and what is your name?"
"Moni is my name--"
"Will you sing me the song once more, that you have just sung? We heard only one verse."
"It is too long," explained Moni; "it would be too late for the goats, they must go home." He straightened his weather-beaten cap, swung his rod in the air, and called to the goats which had already begun to nibble all around: "Home! Home!"
"You will sing to me some other time, Moni, won't you?" called Paula after him.
"Surely I will, and good night!" he called back, then trotted along with the goats, and in a short time the whole flock stood still below, a few steps from the Bath House by the rear building, for here Moni had to leave the goats belonging to the house, the beautiful white one and the black one with the pretty little kid. Moni treated the last with great care, for it was a delicate little creature and he loved it more than all the others. It was so attached to him that it ran after him continually all day long. He now led it very tenderly along and placed it in its shed; then he said:
"There, M?ggerli, now sleep well; are you tired? It is really a long way up there, and you are still so little. Now lie right down, so, in the nice straw!"
After he had put M?ggerli to bed in this way, he hurried along with his flock, first up to the hill in front of the Baths, and then down the road to the village.
Here he took out his little horn and blew so vigorously into it, that it resounded far down into the valley. From all the scattered houses the children now came running out; each rushed upon his goat, which he knew a long way off; and from the houses near by, one woman and then another seized her little goat by the cord or the horn, and in a short time the entire flock was separated and each creature came to its own place. Finally Moni stood alone with the brown one, his own goat, and with her he now went to the little house on the side of the mountain, where his grandmother was waiting for him, in the doorway.
"Has all gone well, Moni?" she asked pleasantly, and then led the brown goat to her shed, and immediately began to milk her. The grandmother was still a robust woman and cared for everything herself in the house and in the shed and everywhere kept order. Moni stood in the doorway of the shed and watched his grandmother. When the milking was ended, she went into the little house and said: "Come, Moni, you must be hungry."
She had everything already prepared. Moni had only to sit down at the table; she seated herself next him, and although nothing stood on the table but the bowl of corn-meal mush cooked with the brown goat's milk, Moni hugely enjoyed his supper. Then he told his grandmother what he had done through the day, and as soon as the meal was ended he went to bed, for in the early dawn he would have to start forth again with the flock.
In this way Moni had already spent two summers. He had been goat-boy so long and become so accustomed to this life and grown up together with his little charges that he could think of nothing else. Moni had lived with his grandmother ever since he could remember. His mother had died when he was still very little; his father soon after went with others to military service in Naples, in order to earn something, as he said, for he thought he could get more pay there.
His wife's mother was also poor, but she took her daughter's deserted baby boy, little Solomon, home at once and shared what she had with him. He brought a blessing to her cottage and she had never suffered want.
Good old Elizabeth was very popular with every one in the whole village,