ABSTRACT
In a run-down hovel alone as a thumb there lived a bonny laddie. His parents had died one after the other in the course of a week and he had no family on either his father's or his mother's side. So he lived for a time like some kind of hermit and kept himself as best he knew how, just barely scraping by. But he was unable to endure all by himself for long, for the longer it went, the stranger and more boring it became for him, and his guts were in knots from impatience. In the end, the loneliness completely vexed him and he thought, "Why should I suffer here so? There's no one here to cook or clean for me. It would be better to go into the world!"
