“Gladly,” the princess responded; “but have you anything to roast it in? I have neither pot nor saucepan to spare.”
“That’s all right,” Blockhead Hans told her. “Here is a dish that will serve my purpose.” And he showed her the wooden shoe and laid the crow in it.
The princess laughed and said, “If you are going to prepare a dinner you ought at least to have some soup to go with your crow.”
“Very true,” he agreed, “and I have it in my pocket.” Then he showed her the mud he was carrying.
“I like you,” the princess declared. “You can answer when you are spoken to. You have something to say. So I will marry you. But do you know that every word we speak is being recorded and will be in the paper tomorrow. Over by the window not far from where we are you can see three reporters and an old editor. None of them understands much and the editor doesn’t understand anything.”
At these words the reporters giggled, and each dropped a blot of ink on the floor.
“Ah! those are great people,” Blockhead Hans remarked. “I will give the editor something to write about.”
Then he took a handful of mud from his pocket and threw it smack in the great man’s face.
“That was neatly done!” the princess said—“much better, in fact, than I could have done it myself.”
She and Blockhead Hans were married, and presently he became king and wore a crown and sat on the throne. At any rate so the newspaper said, but of course you can’t believe all you see in the papers.