Catherine and the Cheeses

Catherine the farm girl was so simple and naive that she was always getting into trouble. One day, she was taking the cheeses to market, when one fell out of her basket and rolled off down the hill.

'I really don't feel like chasing after it,' she thought. 'I'll send someone else to get it back.'

So she rolled another cheese off after the first. She waited and waited, but neither of the cheeses came back. 'Perhaps they want company,' thought Catherine, and sent off a third cheese. When none of them came back, she thought that perhaps the third cheese had gone the wrong way, and so she sent sent a fourth to look for it. She then set off the fifth cheese, and the sixth, and the seventh, until eventually her basket was empty.

For a while, she waited patiently but then she grew annoyed. "If you cheese think I can be bothered wasting time waiting for you, you're wrong. I'm going ahead without you, and you can just run along behind me. That'll teach you to be so disobedient.'

So she arrive at the market empty handed, and her husband shouted at her. 'Why are you getting angry?' said Catherine. 'In just a few minuted those cheeses will be along, you'll see!'