Buster John smiled faintly, but Sweetest Susan took the statement seriously, though she said nothing. Drusilla boldly indorsed it.

 

“I speck¹ dat’s so,” she said, “kaze when de lil’ gal² got back home wid dat vial she wa’n’t in no fix fer ter cut up dem kind er capers³ what de tales tell about.”

 

“Certainly not,” remarked Mr. Thimblefinger, “but now she has had time to grow up to be a young lady, almost. Names go for so little down here that I haven’t told you hers. She was named Eolen. Some said it was a beautiful name, but her stepmother and her stepmother’s daughter said it was very ugly. Anyhow, that was her name, and whether it was ugly or whether it was beautiful, she had to make the best of it.

 

“Well, Eolen went home when the old man gave her the vial of water from the Well at the End of the World. She hid the vial beneath her apron⁴ until she reached her own room, and then she placed it at the very bottom of her little trunk,—a trunk that had belonged to her mother, who was dead.

 

“Nothing happened for a long time. Whenever Friday fell on the thirteenth of a month, Eolen would rub a drop of the sparkling water on her forehead, and she grew to be the loveliest young lady that ever was seen. Her stepsister was not bad-looking, but, compared with Eolen, she was ugly. The contrast between them was so great that people could not help noticing it and making remarks about it. Some of these remarks came to the ears of her stepmother.

 

“Now a stepmother can be just as nice and as good as anybody, but this particular stepmother cared for nothing except her own child, and she soon came to hate Eolen for being so beautiful. She had never treated the child kindly⁵, but now she began to treat her cruelly. Eolen never told her father, but somehow he seemed to know what was going on, and he treated her more affectionately each day, as her stepmother grew more cruel.

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