“That is good to hear,” said Luck of the Bean-rows, looking at her in surprise; “and where are you sending me?”
The old woman sat down on a stool, and with her two hands on her knees, replied with a laugh: “Into the world, into the wide world, little Luck. You have never seen anyone but ourselves, and a few poor market folk you sell your beans to, to keep the house going, good lad. Now one day, one day, you will be a big man if the price of beans keeps up, so it will be well for you, dearie, to know some people in good society. I must tell you there is a great city four or five miles away where at every step one meets lords in cloth of gold and ladies in silver dresses with trails of roses. Your bonnie little face, so pleasant and so lively, will be sure to win them; and I shall be much mistaken if the day goes by without your getting some distinguished appointment at court or in the public offices, where you may earn much and do little. So eat it up and do not spare the good porridge sweetened with honey and a pinch of green aniseed.
“Now as you know more about the price of beans than about the value of money,” the old woman went on, “you are to sell in the market these six quart measures of choice beans. I have not put more lest you should be overburdened. Besides, with beans as dear as they are now, you would be hard set to bring home the price even if they paid you only in gold. So we propose, father and I, that you should keep half of what you get to enjoy yourself properly, as young people should, or in buying yourself some pretty trinket to wear of a Sunday, such as a silver watch with ruby and emerald seals, or an ivory cup and ball or a Nuremberg humming-top. The rest of the money you can put in the bank.
“So away with you, my little Luck, since you have finished your porridge; and be sure that you do not lose time chasing butterflies, for we should die broken-hearted if you were not home before nightfall. And keep to the roads for fear of the wolves.”
“I will do as you bid me, mother,” replied the Luck of the Bean-rows, hugging the old woman, “though for my part I would sooner spend the day in the field. As for wolves, they don’t trouble me with my weeding-hook.”
So saying he slung his pronged hoe in his belt, and set out at a steady pace.
“Come back early,” the old woman kept calling after him; she was already feeling sorry that she had let him go.
Luck of the Bean-rows tramped on and on, taking huge strides like a five-foot giant, and staring left and right at the strange things he saw by the way. He had never dreamed that the world was so big and so full of wonders.