At Court, Tom bears himself as to the manner born; wears the King’s signet for a girdle, creeps nimbly into the royal button-hole, and finds a place, sooner than most courtiers, “near his Highness heart”. At home, he is still the gentle scapegrace beloved of village folk. If he craves a boon of the King, it is to relieve the wants of his parents: and the boon,
“as much of silver coin
As well his arms could hold”,
amounts to the great sum of threepence,
“A heavy burden which did make
His weary limbs to crack.”
There is a kind of natural magic in all this that a child can grasp without the help of a magician. Tom Thumb although he is wingless, can wear a fairy dress: an oak-leaf hat, a spider-woven shirt, hose and doublet of thistle-down and
“shoes made of a mouse’s skin
And tann’d most curiously”.