efell the
village pots at that time. She soon grew quite fat with all the corn she
earned with the help of her pot, and then one evening she picked up a
pumpkin seed in a corner, and planted it near her well, and it sprang
up, and gave her many pumpkins.

At last it happened that a youth from her village passed through the
place where the girl's brother was, and the two met and talked.

'What news is there of my sister?' asked the young man, with whom things
had gone badly, for he was idle.

'She is fat and well-liking,' replied the youth, 'for the women borrow
her mortar to clean their corn, and borrow her pot to cook it in, and
for all this they give her more food than she can eat.' And he went his
way.

Now the brother was filled with envy at the words of the man, and he set
out at once, and before dawn he had reached the hut, and saw the pot and
the mortar were standing outside. He slung them over his shoulders and
departed, pleased with his own cleverness; but when his sister awoke
and sought for the pot to cook her corn for breakfast, she could find it
nowhere. At length she said to herself:

'Well, some thief must have stolen them while I slept. I will go and see
if any of my pumpkins are ripe.' And indeed they were, and so many that
the tree was almost broken by the weight of them. So she ate what she
wanted and took the others, to the village, and gave them in exchange
for corn, and the women said that no pumpkins were as sweet as these,
and that she was to bring every day all that she had. In this way she
earned more than she needed for herself, and soon was able to get
another mortar and cooking pot in exchange for her corn. Then she
thought she was quite rich.

* * * * *

Unluckily someone else thought so too, and this was her brother's wife,
who had heard all about the pumpkin tree, and sent her slave with a
handful of grain to buy her a pumpkin. At first the girl told him that
so few were left that she could not spare any; but when she found that
he belonged to her brother, she changed her mind, and went out to the
tree and gathered the largest and the ripest that was there.

'Take this one,' she said to the slave, 'and carry it back to your
mistress, but tell her to keep the corn, as the pumpkin is a gift.'

The brother's wife was overjoyed at the sight of the fruit, and when she
tasted it, she declared it was the nicest she had ever eaten. Indeed,
all night she t