THERE WAS ONCE AN OLD PEASANT who lived in a village with his wife and their two children. He came to the end of his life and he died. Then it was his old woman’s turn to get ready to die—her time had come too. She called the children to her, her son and her daughter. The daughter was the elder, the son the younger.
She said to her son, “Obey your sister in everything, as you have obeyed me. Now she will be a mother to you.”
The mother gave a last sigh—she was sorry to be parting from her children forever—and then died.
After the death of their parents, the children lived as their mother had told them to live. The brother obeyed his sister, and the sister took care of her brother and loved him.
And so they lived on without their parents, perhaps many years, perhaps few. One day the sister said to her brother, “It’s hard for me to keep house on my own, and it’s time you were married. Marry—then there’ll be a mistress to look after the home.”
But the brother did not want to marry. “The home has a mistress already,” he said. “Why do we need a second mistress?”
“I’ll help her,” said his sister. “With two of us the work will be easier.”
The brother didn’t want to marry, but he didn’t dare disobey his elder sister. He respected her as if she were his mother.
The brother married and began to live happily with his wife. As for his sister, he loved and respected her just as before, obeying her in everything.
At first his wife seemed not to mind her sister-in-law. And the sister-in-law, for her part, did all she could to be obliging.
But soon the wife began to feel upset.