Atondido Stories
The Story of Long Beard, the Dwarf, and the Two Sisters
There was once a poor man whose wife died leaving him a
daughter. 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 differ-
ent from your good-for-nothing Lenka who always breaks eve-
rything 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 al-
ways 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, pretend-
ing Dorla did everything that she didn’t do and saying that good
industrious Lenka was lazy and good-for-nothing.
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