MORE AND BETTER

That ""more"" is not the same as ""better"" is belabored but not really illustrated in this mechanical, token fictionalization. In the woods near his home, a little boy from a poor farm comes across a mysterious old woman who gives him delicious fish soup and then ""more""--not more soup but a little green bottle of liquid which, when sprayed on the animals and crops, makes them bigger. But their growth brings problems and besides, it also makes the thistles and flies bigger; and so Mark takes ""more"" back to the old woman who then gives him ""better""--cobwebs in a pepper box--and that makes the farm prosperous and jolly. If there is a story in this obvious axiom, Neve's lifeless construction isn't it, and her speckled scenes of stock, folk-style plants and animals are just as wooden.