His master was a miser, as I have said, and he and his help ate supper with no other light than that of the fire, for he would not furnish candles. Tom did not like this, and one night he thrust his spoon into the middle of the soup dish where the soup was hottest and clapped a spoonful into his master’s mouth.
“You rascal!” his master cried, “my mouth is all burned.”
“Then why do you keep the house so dark?” Tom asked. “I can’t half see, and what wonder is it if I missed the way to my own mouth and got the spoon in your mouth, instead?”
After that they always had a candle on the table at supper, for his master would feed no more in the dark while Tom was present.
One day a butcher came and bought a fine fat calf from Tom’s master. He tied its legs, took it on the horse’s back in front of him, and off he went.
“Master,” Tom said, “what do you say to playing a joke on that fellow? With your leave I’ll get that calf away from him before he has gone two miles, and he won’t know what has become of it either.”
“You can try,” the master said, “but I don’t believe you can do it.”
So Tom went into the house, got a pretty shoe with a silver buckle to it that belonged to the servant maid and ran across a field till he got ahead of the butcher. He threw the shoe into the middle of the highway and hid behind a hedge. The butcher came riding along with the calf before him.
“Hey!” he said, “there’s a fine lady’s shoe. If it wasn’t that this calf makes it a great trouble to get off and on I’d alight and pick the shoe up. But after all what is the use of one shoe without its neighbor?”
On he rode and let it lie. Tom then slipped out from behind the hedge, secured the shoe, and ran across the fields till he again got before the butcher. He threw the shoe into the middle of the road and once more crouched behind the hedge and waited.