Читать книгу River of fairy tales. Unprofessional translation from Russian онлайн

38 страница из 61

He threw his axe to the fence and decided not to go to the forest.

Frol’s house was old – he got it from his parents. It required a lot of repairs. He wanted to set about repairing his house a long time ago. One of the walls nodded and was about to fall and crumble. But now the owner looked at it with different eyes. He gave it a little thinking and got scared: «If I renovate the house and rebuild it, somebody may want to visit me. Or relatives will come to see me. I will have to give them something to eat and drink. No, I don’t need it. I don’t want to waste my food on guests. I’d better leave the house in ruins. Then nobody will visit me or stay in it.»

That’s the way Frol was living. With one thought in his head – he did not want to do anything that might be good or beneficial for other people. And when it came to sharing anything with anybody, it was death-like for Frol.

Winter came, it became frosty. The cow gave no milk. And the man did not feed it – he grudged hay for the cow. It was hungry, became weaker and weaker and then died. The hens did not lay eggs. Frol was starving them as well. He was too greedy to give any millet to his hens. They died, too.