“Put it in the bag,” said Gredel.
He did so, and immediately there was a chink.
Over he turned the sack, and lo! there were ten pennies sprinkled on the table.
“Ho, ho,” said Peterkin, “if, now, the bag increases money after such a pleasant manner, I have but to take out one coin and cast it in again, and soon I shall have a fortune.” He did so; but he heard no chinking. He inverted the bag again, and out fell the one coin he had picked up while digging the potato-patch.
“This, now, is very singular,” he said; “let me put on the spectacles.” This done, “Ha!” he cried, “I see now how it is. The money will never grow in the sack, unless one works hard; and then it increases whether one will or not.”
Meanwhile Gredel, taking up the stick, it took the shape of a broom, and upon the hint she swept the floor. Next, sitting down before Peterkin’s clothes, the stick became a needle, and she stitched away with a will.
So time rolled on. The cottage flourished, and the garden was beautiful. Then a cow was brought home, and it was wonderful how often fresh money changed in the wallet. Gredel had grown handsomer, and so also had Peterkin. But one day it came to pass that Peterkin said: “Mother, it is time I went over the great hill.”
“What! canst thou leave me?”
“Thou didst leave thy father and mother.”
Gredel was wiser than she had been, and so she quietly said: “Let us put on the spectacles. Ah! I see,” she then said, “a mother may love her son, but she must not stand in his way as he goes on in the world, or she becomes his enemy.”