Любимые английские сказки / My Favourite English Fairy Tales

Dame Goody was a nurse that looked after[2] sick people, and minded babies. One night she woke up at midnight, and when she went downstairs, she saw a strange squinny-eyed[3], little ugly old fellow, who asked her to come to his wife who was too ill to mind her baby. Dame Goody didn’t like the look of the old fellow, but business is business; so she popped on[4] her things, and went down to him. And when she got down to him, he whisked her up on to a large coal-black[5] horse with fiery eyes, that stood at the door; and soon they were going at a rare pace, Dame Goody holding on to the old fellow like grim death[6].

They rode, and they rode, till at last[7] they stopped before a cottage door. So they got down and went in and found the good woman abed with the children playing about; and the babe, a fine bouncing boy, beside her.

Dame Goody took the babe, which was a fine baby boy. The mother, when she handed the baby to Dame Goody to mind, gave her a box of ointment, and told her to stroke the baby’s eyes with it as soon as it opened them. After a while it began to open its eyes. Dame Goody saw that it had squinny eyes just like its father. So she took the box of ointment and stroked its two eyelids with it. But she wondered what it was for, as she had never seen such a thing before. So she looked to see if the others were looking, and, when they were not noticing, she stroked her own right eyelid with the ointment.