The Milk Woman and Her Pail to learn English with short fairy tales from Aesop’s fables with a podcast and vocabulary practice
Source: Gutenberg Project at www.gutenberg.org
A farmer’s daughter was carrying her pail of milk from the field to the farmhouse, when she fell a-musing:
The money for which this milk will be sold, will buy at least three hundred eggs.
The eggs, allowing for all mishaps, will produce two hundred and fifty chickens.
The chickens will become ready for the market when poultry will fetch the highest price, so that by the end of the year I shall have money enough from my share to buy a new gown.
In this dress, I will go to the Christmas parties, where all the young fellows will propose to me, but I will toss my head and refuse them every one.
At this moment, she tossed her head in unison with her thoughts, when down fell the milk pail to the ground, and all her imaginary schemes perished in a moment.
Don’t count your chickens before they hatch.
New words and expressions
- Pail: bucket
- To muse: think, ponder, visualize
- Mishap: accident, misfortune, casualty
- Poultry: domestic fowls such as chickens, ducks, geese, etc.
- Fetch: sell for, raise, produce
- Gown: elegant dress
- Propose to: to make an offer of marriage to someone
- Toss: lightly throw something
- In unison: in agreement, in harmony
- Imaginary: unreal, based on imagination
- Scheme: plan
- Perish: disappear, die out
Hello Dr.Hariri. I have a question:
In this sentence ( but I will toss my head and refuse them every one. ), are both them and everyone object?
Hi Armaghan. Thanks for asking me questions.
In this sentence, ‘them’ is a pronoun functioning as the object that refers to ‘young fellows’, and ‘every one’ is used to emphasize all the individual young fellows. This is because a sentence cannot have 2 objects referring to ONE entity. Therefore, ‘every one’ is just used to place emphasis on ‘every one’ of the young fellows or ‘them’.