Aunt Mietta from the village of Mess was so stingy, so stingy, that she was ready to cut the wool from an egg.
Once, with a spinning wheel in her hand, she was driving her cows into the Obespi field and found on the road a huge ball of wool that looked like some kind of animal. She quickly bent down to pick it up. She was in such a hurry, in such a hurry, that she didn’t even think about the spinner who had lost her ball. She had already seen it in the voluminous pocket of her apron, which seemed to be specially made for this purpose.
But Aunt Miette couldn’t manage to catch the ball. It kept rolling and rolling forward, and in order to grab it, she hurriedly threw her spinning wheel by the road. Now both her hands were free and greedily reached for the ball. But the ball slipped away and kept rolling and rolling forward! Aunt Mietta forgot about her spinning wheel, abandoned on the road, about her two beautiful cows, which, out of habit, calmly went to pasture on their own. She was chasing the ball like crazy, which was running away from her... Like a will-o'-the-wisp, it flashed ahead and stubbornly refused to fall into her hands. Panting, she ran through the village meadow and climbed, without noticing it, to the Chatel-Guison hill. She seemed ready to run to the ends of the world after the mysterious ball. Finally, she managed to grab not the ball, but the tip of the thread that was trailing behind it.
She began to wind the thread around her fingers and so gradually wound up a magnificent large ball. And the first one did not decrease and kept running forward, dragging old Miette with her.
Now she is happy: she holds with both hands, pressing to her chest, a huge ball of wool. She will knit a jacket and trousers from it for her husband, a skirt for herself, and sell the rest of the wool... What luck! Aunt Mietta does not feel tired.
The ball soon becomes so large that it is no longer possible to wind the thread around it. Aunt Mietta is very upset, but there is nothing to do - the thread needs to be cut. Aunt Miette interrupts her with a sigh of regret.
Suddenly the desired ball that she was chasing makes an incredible leap and disappears from sight! At the same moment, the second magnificent ball, which she had wound with such difficulty, slipped out of her hands, despite all her efforts to hold it.
And now the old woman gives chase again! She managed to catch the end of the thread again. Twenty times she wound the thread into a ball and twenty times her work ended in nothing.
Aunt Miette was seen that day in Mont Redon, and in Shastra, and in Ourcières - everywhere. Disheveled, out of breath, exhausted, she ran after the ball, feverishly rewinding it.
Her husband found both cows in Obespi's field, and his wife's spinning wheel was found on the edge of the road. But old Mietta still can’t stop, and is still running through the forests and fields.
If you find a ball of wool on the road that looks like a small animal, pick it up, but only in order to return it to the spinner who dropped it.
Translated from Russian · original on wisdomlib.ru