There was a girl who lived on a Welsh sheep farm where everyone worked and there was still hardly enough to go round. When the sheep were sheared the fleece was mostly sold to weavers and spinners down the valley, but some of the fleece was kept and spun into yarn and knitted into socks and stockings by the family. Buyers came to market day and bought the socks to be sold in the cities to discriminating house wives. But this girl could not knit. Perhaps she would not knit. She did not pick up the needles at the age of four as her brothers and sisters had. She hated the laboriousness of the work. How could any one sit still so long just to turn out such a ridiculous thing as a sock? The whole family wore clogs stuffed with straw which worked perfectly well.
``If you wont knit then you must learn to spin,'' her mother said. But she could not spin either. The yarn she spun was lumpy and uneven. Useless.
``This girl is good for nothing,'' her father said.
She ran out into the green Welsh hills and played all day. When she came home for supper there was no place set for her at the table. Her little trundle bed was gone from the sleeping room.
``There is no place here for a person who will not work,'' her father said.
The girl went to sleep in the barn. A white owl stood on the rafters and looked down at her.
``What are you doing here, girl?'' the owl asked.
``They wont let me in the house because I wont work. I try to knit but I can't. I hate the horrid sharp pointy needles and all the tight little loops. I can't spin either...'' she started to cry.
``I could teach you to fly,'' the owl offered.
The girl laughed through her tears, ``No you couldn't. I don't have any wings. Even if you did teach me, they would tie a ribbon round my ankle and take me to the fair and charge a penny a person to watch a girl fly!''
The owl looked at the girl, ``What can you do then?''
``Nothing.''
``You talk very well,'' the owl said, ``perhaps you could sell the socks your family knits and cut out the middle man.''
The next day the girl asked her father if he would give her some socks and stockings to sell. Ten pair. Mixed sizes. Her father gave her the stockings. He told her never to come home without either the stockings in good condition or the money she got for them.
She walked all the way to Bristol where she found a prosperous neighborhood and she sold the hosiery door to door. She gave her father half the money she got and he was well pleased. After a few years the girl took all the money she had saved, said a fond good-bye to the owl in the barn, and moved to Bath. She bought some very fine clothes and stayed at a respectable lodging house. One morning at the pump rooms a rich and handsome young man broke all the rules and introduced himself.
In a few weeks they were married, and very happily I might add, though her husband was rather puzzled by her refusal ever to knit baby clothes.