Long, long ago Mrs. Frog lived on the hillsides. She was a goddess worshiped by all the fairies because she ruled the sunshine and the rain, and she was a friend to them all, being generous and dutiful.  
With her seventy daughters, she spent the days in spinning the most beautiful cloth of gold for the fairies to wear, and the flax which she spun¹ was as yellow as the biggest and ripest pumpkin² you ever saw.
 
All the years that she served the fairies by her industry, and was dutiful in calling down the rains to refresh the earth, she was in great favor with the world, and no one was so much beloved by all the animals as Mrs. Frog.
 
But the seventy daughters who were so handsome, and who spun such miles of yellow thread, grew restless, and kept begging their mother for a holiday. She, too, owned to being a little weary, and would often remark with a yawn that it wasn't the spinning, nor yet the weaving, which tired her, but the lack of diversion.
 
"And think, dear Mother," they would say, "think of our lazy brothers, who do nothing but admire their shapely legs all day, and spend the whole night dancing and singing and eating suppers. It isn't fair!"
 
On speaking thus the daughters were very artful. For if there was one thing which angered Mrs. Frog, it was the laziness of her sons. Years and years ago she had given up trying to get them to do a single useful thing. And it was no consolation³ to observe that they got along in the world somehow, whether they did anything or not.
 
"Look at their awful stomachs," she would exclaim. "The lazy creatures, always eating and singing. What a life!"
 
It was thus that the seventy daughters played upon her feelings of disgust, urging her to adopt a change and give up spinning. Each one spoke⁴ to her alone, seven times a week, when she would reply:
 
"Yes, my daughter, I am listening, and I don't know but what you are quite right."
 
And then, when all the whole seventy spoke together, as they made a point of doing when they knew she was tired out and had the headache, she could only clasp her hands to her ears and flee to her bedroom.
 
At last the daughters won and Mrs. Frog began her holiday. She meant to take but a single evening and a day, hoping to get back to work there-after, rested and refreshed. But alas⁵! once she began her career of dancing, and feasting, and staying up till morning to sing and laugh and watch the sun come up, the day never came that she was willing to spin the yellow flax.
 
Forty of the lovely daughters danced themselves to death within a week, but Mrs. Frog was so busy waltzing and marching and singing that in each instance, as the sad news came to her that another daughter was dead, she was too gay to care or even to ask, "Which one?"
 
Terrible disaster began to come upon the land. All the birds and plants were dying for water. Clouds passed by, but Mrs. Frog was too lazy to make the rain fall. If she wasn't dancing, she was sleeping, and so no time remained for her duties.
 
One d............