I will tell you a story that was told me when I was a little boy.Every time I thought of this story,it seemed to me more and more charming;for it is with stories as it is with many people—they become better as they grow older.
I have no doubt that you have been in the country,and seen a very old farmhouse,with a thatched roof,and mosses and small plants growing wild upon it.There is a stork's nest on the ridge of the gable,for we cannot do without the stork.The walls of the house are sloping,and the windows are low,and only one of the latter is made to open.The baking-oven sticks out of the wall like a great knob.An elder-tree hangs over the palings;and beneath its branches,at the foot of the paling,is a pool of water,in which a few ducks are disporting themselves.There is a yard-dog too,who barks at all corners.Just such a farmhouse as this stood in a country lane;and in it dwelt an old couple,a peasant and his wife.Small as their possessions were,they had one article they could not do without,and that was a horse,which contrived to live upon the grass which it found by the side of the high road.The old peasant rode into the town upon this horse,and his neighbors often borrowed it of him,and paid for the loan of it by rendering some service to the old couple.After a time they thought it would be as well to sell the horse,or exchange it for something which might be more useful to them.But what might this something be?