So he took his stand on the fridge and stayed there all day. The passers-by stared at him, and some of them spoke to him, but none of them said to him anything that might, by any chance, lead him on to fortune. All that day he waited on the bridge, and all of the day after, and by the time the third day came, he had eaten all the food he had brought with him except one hard, dry crust of bread. Then he began to wonder whether he were not a simpleton to be loitering there day after day, all because of a dream, when he might, perhaps, be earning a few pennies at home in one way or another.
Now just beyond this bridge there was a tailor’s shop, and the tailor who lived there was a very curious man. Ever since Peter had taken his stand on the bridge the tailor had been peeping out at him, and wondering why he was standing there, and what his business might be; and the longer Peter stayed the more curious the tailor became. He fussed and he fidgeted, and along toward the afternoon of the third day he could bear it no longer, and he put aside his work and went out to the bridge to find out what he could about Peter and what he was doing there.
When he came where Peter was he bade him good-day.
“Good-day,” answered Peter.
“Are you waiting here on the bridge for some one?” asked the tailor.
“I am and I am not,” replied Peter.
“Now what may be the meaning of that?” asked the tailor. “How can you be waiting and still not be waiting all at one and the same time?”
“I am waiting for some one—that is true”; said Peter, “but I know not who he is nor whence he will come, nor, for the matter of that, whether any one will come at all.” And then he related to the tailor his dream, and how he had been told that if he waited on the bridge for three days some one would come along and tell him something that would make him rich for life.
“Why, what a silly fellow you are,” said the tailor. “I, too, have dreamed dreams, but I have too much sense to pay any attention to them. Only last week I dreamed three times that an old man came to me and told me to follow up along the bank of the river until I came to a hut where a man and his wife lived,—the man’s name was Peter, and his wife’s name was Kate. I was to go and dig among the roots of an apple tree back of this house, and there, buried among the roots of the tree, I would find a chest of golden money. That was what I dreamed. But did I go wandering off in search of such a place? No, indeed, I am not such a simpleton. I stick to my work, and I can manage to keep a warm roof over my head, and have plenty of food to eat, and when I am dressed in my best there is not one of the neighbors that looks half as fine as I do. No, no; go back to where you belong and set to work, my man, and maybe you can earn something better than those miserable rags you are wearing now.”
So said the tailor, and then he went back to his tailor’s bench and his sewing.