Read "The Maids and the Cock" by Leo Tolstoy online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
A mistress used to wake the Maids at night and, as soon as the cocks crowed, put them to work. The Maids found that hard, and decided to kill the Cock, so that the mistress should not be wakened. They killed him, but now they suffered more than ever: the mistress was afraid that she would sleep past the time and so began to wake the Maids earlier.