Page:Slavonic Fairy Tales.djvu/160

Rh "Open your eyes, mother! open your eyes!"

And as soon as his mother opened her eyes, Yanechek would jump up, turn round on his heel, and clapping his hands together would cry joyfully,—

"Mother is alive again! Mother is alive again!"

And the shepherdess, instead of taking a cane to chastise her mischievous son, would simply say,—

"How you frightened me, you naughty boy!"

And this reproof seemed to her a sufficient punishment for her dear son.

But the wicked boy caused the greatest anxiety to his mother Dorothy when he went to bathe in the large pool. There was no part of that pool, deep as it was, where Yanechek did not dive to the bottom. On warm days he would splash about in the smooth water, turn somersaults, and leap and gambol like a playful carp. Or he would climb up the willow trees growing on the bank of the pool, and from the highest and thinnest branches he would spring headlong into the cool, deep water.

"Yanechek! Yanechek!" his mother often cried, "don't bathe in the pool. You will fall into the Water Demon's net some day."

"I don't care for the Water Demon," the boy would answer laughing. Then he would run into the forest and gather a cap full of strawberries or a basket of mushrooms for his mother. For Dorothy was very fond