“A red crêpe frock and a brocade obi.”
“Miss Vanity!” says the boy, but he shakes all this gravely out of the mallet.
“Books, story books.”
“That’s better,” says the boy, and out come the books by the dozen and score, all open to show the lovely pictures.
Now, when the children had their hearts’ desires, the leader put away the mallet beneath its mossy stone, and after they had played for some time they became tired; their bright attires melted away into the gloom of the wood, and their pretty voices grew distant and then were heard no more. It was very still.
Kanè awoke, good man, and found the sun set and darkness beginning to fall. There was the mossy stone right under his hand. He lifted it, and there was the mallet.
“Now,” said Kanè, taking it up, “begging the pardon of the fairies’ children, I’ll make bold to borrow that mallet.” So he took it home in his sleeve and spent a pleasant evening shaking gold pieces out of it, and saké, and new clothes, and farmers’ tools, and musical instruments, and who knows what all!
It is not hard to believe that pretty soon he became the richest and jolliest farmer in all that country-side. Sleek and fat he grew, and his heart was bigger and kinder than ever.
But what like was Cho’s heart when he got wind of all this? Ay, there’s the question. Cho turned green with envy, as green as grass. “I’ll have a fairy mallet, too,” he says, “and be rich for nothing. Why should that idiot spendthrift Kanè have all the good fortune?” So he goes and begs rice from his brother, which his brother gives him very willingly, a good sackful. And he waits for it to ripen, quite wild with impatience. It ripens sure enough, and sure enough a flight of swallows comes and settles upon the good grain in the ear.
“Arah! Arah!” shouted Cho, clapping his hands and laughing aloud for joy. The swallows flew away, and Cho was after them. He chased them over hill and dale, hedge and ditch, rice-field and mulberry-field, till at last they flew away from his sight, and he found himself in a mossy dell shaded by spreading pine-trees. Cho looks about him.