Page:The Children Who Followed the Piper.djvu/44

THE CHILDREN goose, and that goose was all there was of live stock about the place. There was no watchdog, either, and the goose stood before the house and cackled to let the people within know that strangers were coming.

But poor as it was the gods were made welcome to that house. An old woman stood at the doorway and asked them to enter. They stooped their heads to pass under that doorway. Then the old woman lighted a fire with twigs and split wood, and blew and blew at it until the fire blazed up on the hearth.

There was a couch there made of woven willow rods. When she saw the strangers standing on her floor the old woman—Baucis was her name—put a mattress filled with sedge grass, soft and dry, upon it, and asked them to seat themselves. The couch took up the whole side of the house.

Then the old man, Philemon, came in, carrying the cabbages that he had cut in the garden when he saw the strangers coming. He cut and