ghter. The
little girl's name was Lenka. She was a good little girl, cheerful and
obedient and very industrious, and she did all she could to make her
father comfortable.

After some time the man married again. His second wife also had a
little girl just Lenka's age. Her name was Dorla. Dorla was a lazy,
ill-natured child, always quarreling and bickering. Yet her mother
thought Dorla was perfect and she was always praising her to her
husband.

"See what a good child my Dorla is," she would say to him. "She works
and spins and never says a cross word. Very different from your
good-for-nothing Lenka who always breaks everything she touches and
does nothing in return for all the good food she eats!"

She never stopped nagging and scolding her poor stepchild and
complaining about her to her husband. Lenka was patient and went on
quietly doing what was right, and she was always polite to her
stepmother, and kind to her ill-natured stepsister.

She and Dorla used to go to spinning bees together. Dorla would play
and waste her time and hardly fill one spindle. Lenka always worked
industriously and usually filled two or three spools. Yet, when the
two girls got home, the mother always took Dorla's half-filled spindle
and said to the father: "See what beautiful yarn my Dorla spins!" She
would hide Lenka's spools and say: "Your Lenka did nothing but play
and waste her time!"

And before other people she talked the same way, pretending Dorla did
everything that she didn't do and saying that good industrious Lenka
was lazy and good-for-nothing.

One night when the two girls were walking home together from a
spinning bee, they came to a ditch in the road. Dorla jumped quickly
across and then reached back her hand and said:

"My dear sister, let me hold your spindle. You may fall and hurt
yourself."

Poor Lenka, suspecting nothing unkind, handed Dorla her full spindle.
Dorla took it and ran home and then boasted to her mother and her
stepfather how much she had spun.

"Lenka," she said, "has no yarn at all. She did nothing but play and
waste her time."

"You see," said the woman to her husband. "This is what I'm always
telling you but you never believe me. That Lenka of yours is a lazy,
good-for-nothing girl who expects me and my poor daughter to do all
the work. I'm not going to stand her in the house any longer. Tomorrow
morning out she goes to make her own way in the world. Then perhaps
she'll understand what a good