ing 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, and when, two years be-
