The alarm increased. The grocer’s wife was so terrified that she took her gold earrings out of her ears and put them in her pocket in order to save something. The grocer seized his account books. and the maid her black silk dress.
Everyone wanted to save his most valuable possession; so did the Goblin, and in a few leaps he was up the stairs and in the student’s room. He was standing quietly by the open window looking at the fire that was burning in the neighbour’s house just opposite. The Goblin seized the book lying on the table, put it in his red cap, and clasped it with both hands. The best treasure in the house was saved, and he climbed out on to the roof with it—on to the chimney. There he sat, lighted up by the flames from the burning house opposite, both hands holding tightly on his red cap, in which lay the treasure; and now he knew what his heart really valued most—to whom he really belonged. But when the fire was put out, and the Goblin thought it over—then—
‘I will divide myself between the two,’ he said. ‘I cannot quite give up the grocer, because of the jam!’
And it is just the same with us. We also cannot quite give up the grocer—because of the jam.
The House in the Wood
From the German of Grimm.
A poor woodcutter lived with his wife and three daughters in a little hut on the borders of a great forest.
One morning as he was going to his work, he said to his wife, ‘Let our eldest daughter bring me my lunch into the wood; and so that she shall not lose her way, I will take a bag of millet with me, and sprinkle the seed on the path.’
When the sun had risen high over the forest, the girl set out with a basin of soup. But the field and wood sparrows, the larks and finches, blackbirds and green finches had picked up the millet long ago, and the girl could not find her way.