“You go first,” said the bean, for he was a cautious fellow, and wanted to see whether the bridge was safe before he tried it.
The coal, however, was quick and fiery. He ran out on the straw, but half-way over he grew dizzy and had to stop.
“Quick! quick!” cried the straw. “I am burning”; for the coal was still very hot.
“Wait,” said the coal, balancing himself. “Just a minute!”
But the straw could not wait even for a minute. The coal had burned through it, and down they both went into the water, the coal hissing as it fell.
That seemed so comical to the bean that it began to laugh. It laughed and laughed; it laughed so hard that at last it split its skin, and that would have been the end of it if a tailor had not chanced to come by just then.
The tailor looked all about him, and then he saw the bean lying on the ground. He picked it up, and it did not take him long to see what was the matter with it. “This slit can be easily mended,” said he, and he whipped out his needle and thread and sewed up the bean in a trice. Unluckily he had only black thread, and the stitches made a line of black down the side of the bean. And ever since then, if you look, you will see that every bean of that kind has a black line down one side of it.
