![]() “Stay with me, and you shall have more pay I have stood by the sound and called and cried for a hundred years, but no one has heard it, nor heeded it before you.” “It shall cook itself while you are away,” she said. “Now I shall go back aboard and cook some weekend fare for the churchfolk,” said the boy. “You did not choose that by yourself,” said the witch. “Oh, I want nothing but the tablecloth that lies on the shelf in the cupboard,” said the boy. Yes, when he arrived, and the witch 2 found out that he had helped her sister across the sound, then he must have what he wanted, she said. The boy had to go with her to her sister, who lived in a mountain close by, and there he should ask for the old tablecloth that lay on the shelf of the cupboard. ![]() “Yes, now I have stood here for a hundred years, calling and crying, thinking to cross the sound,” said the woman, “but no one has heard it nor heeded it before you, and you shall have your pay for taking me across the sound,” she said. The boy took the boat and went over, and saw that it was an old woman who stood there, crying. As he began to make the food, he heard calling from across the sound, close by. Thither had a parson but newly arrived, who was so powerful to preach that everyone had to go to church to hear him, and on Sunday, the ship’s company had to go and listen to the sermon. Then the ship sailed, and the boy came to a city far beyond the country. To his wife, he said he had sold the boy for tobacco.īut before he left, the mayor’s daughter broke her ring in two and gave him half, so they could recognise one another, should they meet again. There was nothing for it, so the mayor went him off with a merchant who had arrived with a ship, and there he should be a cabin boy. ![]() “When want comes to glory, it knows not what it will be,” and, “the one who is struck for shillings will never become dollars, no matter that he shine like a gold coin,” said the mayor’s wife he was not allowed there, and she would see him off. But no, it made no difference what he was or what he would be. ![]() Her husband tried to stop her as best he could, and said that no one knew where the children would live, and no one what would happen to them he was a kind and proper boy, and a great tree often grew from a small sapling, he said. When the mayor’s wife saw this, she grew angry: “Shall such a raggamuffin 1 kiss our daughter, we who are the best folk in the city?” she said. One day, the mayor’s wife stood at the window, looking at the children as they were on their way to school, when she saw there was a rain puddle in the street first the boy carried the box of school food across the puddle, then he came back and carried the little girl across-and when he put her down, he stole a kiss. Yes they played together and tidied together, read together and went to school together, and were steady friends, and agreed together. She soon grew to know this pauper boy, too, when he came with his mother, and when the mayor saw that they had so quickly become such good friends, he took in the boy, so that she could have a play brother. They had no more children, so she was both their sweet child and their sugar child, and there was nothing that was too good for her. He was both a kind man and a bold man-one of the best in the city, for he was married to the daughter of one of the richest merchants there-and with her he had a small daughter. When she had gone from house to house there a while, she came to the mayor. First she went from village to village, and then she came to the city. There was once upon a time a pauper woman who went around with her son, begging at home she had neither to bite on, nor to burn.
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