of the doorway.

"I see," said her husband, "that you are going to spin the wool for my
clothes."

"I am when to-morrow comes," said Bloom-of-Youth.

But the next day she did as she done every day and no wool was spun.
The day after she put wool on the wheel and gave it a few turns. In a
week from that evening she had one ball of thread spun.

"Your step-mother bids me ask you how much of the wool have you spun?"
said her husband to her one evening. Bloom-of-Youth was so much afraid
that her husband would send her to her step-mother through the dark,
dark wood, that she said "I have spun many balls."

"Your step-mother bade me count the balls you have spun," said her
husband.

"I will go up to the loft and throw them down to you and then you will
throw them back to me and we will count them that way," said
Bloom-of-Youth.

She went up to the loft and she flung down the ball she had spun.

"One," said her husband, and he threw it back to her.

She flung him the ball again.

"Two," said her husband, and he flung it back to her. Then he said
"three," and then "four," and then "five," and so on until he had
counted twelve. "You have done well," said he, "and now before the
week is out take the twelve balls to your step-mother's house and she
will weave the thread into cloth for clothes for me."

[Illustration]

Bloom-of-Youth was greatly frightened. To her step-mother's house she
would have to go with a dozen balls of thread in a few days. The next
day she hurried back from the well and she sat at her wheel before the
door spinning and spinning. But, do her best, she could not get a good
thread spun in the long length of the day.

And while she was spinning and spinning and getting her thread knotted
and broken a black and crooked woman came and stood before the door.
"You're spinning hard I see," said she to Bloom-of-Youth.

Bloom-of-Youth gave her no answer but put her head against the wheel
and cried and cried.

"And what would you say," said the black and crooked woman, "if I took
the bundle of wool from you now and brought it back to you to-morrow
spun into a dozen balls of thread?"

"It is not what I would say; it is what I should give you," said
Bloom-of-Youth.

"Give me!" said the black and crooked woman. "What could you give me?"
But as she said it she gave Bloom-of-Youth a baleful look from under
her leafy eyebrows. "No, no, you need give me nothing for spinning the
wool for you. All that I'