“And as deep as the bowl,” put in Grosskopf.
“And yet we go hungry to bed,” finished Grossmund.
The hundred hammerers shook, the five-and-twenty apprentices trembled; and all the people stood breathless while Herr Klinkerklanker walked slowly all the way around the pot, and then stepped inside. The giants wrinkled their great brows and waited.
Suddenly something echoed and reëchoed inside the pot. The people listened. It was a sound that chuckled and stopped and went on again, and somehow reminded one for all the world—of a laugh.
Then Herr Klinkerklanker stepped to the mouth of the pot and clapped his hands. The apprentices ran to him.
“Hoes!” cried Herr Klinkerklanker.
In a twinkling the five-and-twenty apprentices with their five-and-twenty hoes were in the pot. Then there arose such a scratching and scraping, and a scraping and scratching as never was heard before; and suddenly out of the pot, into the square burst a whole snowstorm of dried porridge.
Herr Klinkerklanker stepped out and bowed to the giants. “Friends,” he said, “if you will wash your pot clean, it will always be the same size.”
And with that hammerers and housewives, apprentices and children broke into a peal of laughter. As for the giants, they were so much relieved, and so good-natured at any rate, that they liked nothing better than a joke on themselves. Grosskopf capered, Grossmund shouted, and Grosshand let fall such a shower of gold-pieces that the Eisenburgers were still scrambling for them a week later.