Some days afterward the good woman needed a trivet, and sent her son to buy it.
Loony John ran to the city and bought a splendid one, and was returning home contentedly, when he found that the trivet was too heavy. So he sat it down and addressed it:
"There is the road that leads to our home. You have three feet and I have but two. Run on ahead and be sure not to stop on the way, for my mother needs your services."
Loony John put his hands in his pockets and went whistling along the road.
"Where is the trivet?" demanded his mother when he reached home.
"Well, well!" exclaimed Loony John, "is it not already here? The lazy thing must have lagged on the way. With its three feet it should have been here a good quarter of an hour ago."
"Alas!" said the mother, "the trivet is lost. What a simpleton you are to talk to a piece of iron as if it had life. You should have put it in your sack and carried it on your shoulders."
"Well, mother," answered Loony John, "another time I shall know what to do."
One day Loony John's mother concluded to celebrate the birthday of her oldest daughter, and some wine was needed for the invited guests, and Loony John was sent after it to a neighboring village. As he was returning, he remembered what his mother said about putting the trivet in a sack.
"Oh—ho!" he cried. "I was about to make a serious blunder. If I carry this wine to the house in a jug they will scold me. If a trivet should be put in a sack why not the wine!"