Thereupon all the drinkers rose and went to the door; some with bottles in their hands, others brandishing flagons, others again clinking their mugs together like church bells. Blaeskaek went out of the room, crossed the threshold of the outer door, and stepped into the street.
“Well, wives,” said he, “what brings you here with all this greenwood?”
At these words the young ones let fall their sticks to the ground, for they were ashamed to be caught with such weapons.
But one old woman, brandishing hers in the air, answered for the others: “We come, drunkards, to tell you the tale of the stick, and give you a good thrashing.”
“Woe, woe!” wept Pieter Gans, “that, I know, is my grandmother’s voice.”
“So it is, scoundrel,” said the old woman.
Meanwhile the Brothers of the Cheerful Countenance, hearing all this, shook their sides merrily with laughing, and Blaeskaek said: “Then come in, come in, good wives, and let us see how you do your drubbing. Are those good greenwood staves you have brought?”
“Yes,” said they.
“I am glad of that. For our part we have ready for you some good rods, well pickled in vinegar, which we use for whipping disobedient boys. ’Twill doubtless give you all sweet pleasure to feel their caresses, and so recall the days of your youth. Will you be pleased to try them? We will give you plenty.”
But at these scoffing words the old women took fright and ran off as fast as their legs would carry them, more particularly mother Syske, making such terrible threats and noises as they went that they sounded to those jolly Brothers like a flight of screeching crows passing down the deserted streets.