Meanwhile the old woman lit up the house with a fire of dry bean pods, which gladdened the little body of the newcomer, and prepared an excellent bean-pap which a spoonful of honey made delicious eating. Then she laid him to sleep in his fine white night clothes in the best bed of bean-chaff in the house; for these poor folk knew nothing of feather-beds and eider-downs. When he was fast asleep, “There is one thing that bothers me,” said the old man to his wife, “and that is what we are to call this bonny boy, for we know neither his parents nor where he comes from.”
“We must call him,” said the old woman, for though she was but a simple peasant she was quickwitted, “The Luck of the Bean-rows, for it was in our bean field he came to us, the best of luck, to comfort us in our old age.”
“There could not be a better name,” the old man agreed.
It would make the story too long to tell what happened in the days and in all the years that followed; it is enough to know that the old people kept getting older and older, while one could almost see Luck of the Bean-rows putting on strength and good looks. Not that he was mighty of his inches, for at twelve he was only two and a half feet, and when he was at work in the bean field, of which he was very fond, you could hardly have seen him from the road, but his small figure was so shapely, and he was so winning in his looks and ways, so gentle, and yet so sure of his words, and he appeared so gallant in his sky-blue smock, red belt and gay Sunday bonnet with bean blossoms for feathers, that people wondered at him and many believed that he was really an elf or a fairy.
Many things, I grant, encouraged this notion. First of all, the cabin and the bean field—the bean field in which a few years ago a cow would have found nothing to graze on—had become one of the fine estates of the country-side; and not a soul could tell how it had happened. Well, to see beanstalks sprouting, to see them flowering, to see the blossom fading and the beans swelling ripe in the pods—there is nothing out of the common in that, but to see a whole bean field expanding, spreading out, with never a strip of land added, whether bought or knavishly taken from a neighbour’s holding—that gets beyond understanding.
And all the while the bean field went on growing and spreading. It spread to the south wind, it spread to the north wind, it spread towards the dawn, it spread towards the sunset. And the neighbours measured their land to no purpose; they always found it full measure with a rod or two to the good, so they naturally concluded that the whole country was getting bigger. Then again the beans bore so heavily that the cabin could never have contained the crop, had it not also grown larger. And yet for more than five leagues round the bean-crop failed, so that beans had become priceless because of the quantities sought for the tables of lords and kings.
In the midst of this abundance the Luck of the Bean-rows saw to everything himself, turning the soil, sorting the seed, cleansing the plants, weeding, digging, hoeing, harvesting, shelling, and, over and above, trimming hedges and mending wattle fences. What time was left he spent bargaining with the market people, for he could read, write and keep accounts, though he had had no schooling. He was indeed a very blessing of a boy.
