“I wish to lay it near your fire,” said the little boy, “for that will make it hard and then it will hold water. The sun at this season is not hot enough to do this.”
“What is your name?” said Sunrise, “for you seem very thoughtful, for so little a child.”
“I have no name,” said the child.
“I will call you, Shaper,” said Sunrise, “for you have taken clay and shaped it; not foolishly as it is customary for little children to do, but with a purpose.”
They baked the bowl before the fire, and it became hard and brittle, and altho’ parts about the edges of it crumbled, leaving it very shapeless, they found on trial that it would hold water.
“I will teach you,” said Sunrise, “how to take care of a fire of your own. You shall make many things of this kind and I will see to it that people give you valuable presents in exchange. For I think that after this when a man wakes in the night and is thirsty, it will be possible for him to drink without running to the river for the water.”
When the shaper had been taught how to build and tend a fire, he started a little workshop near the place where he had found the clay, and worked busily at the making and baking of bowls. And in both branches of trade he made astonishing progress.
But this shaper was a remarkable child, for no sooner was he an adept at the making of bowls than he wearied of it, and would sooner have starved than make any more. But for that matter he was not in the least bent on starving. So what did he do, but take two disciples of his own age, teach them the craft, lie all day sleeping in the warmth of the fire, and, to use a modernism, pocketing four-fifths of the profits. He became so fat and lazy that he could hardly walk, and at the age of twelve was already annoying the women with his attentions.