"You are a little beggar, you mean? Oh, very well! Then over my bridge you do not go."
"But it is the city on the other side?"
"To be sure it is the city; but over nobody goes without a kreutzer."
"I never have such a thing of my own! never! never!" said
Findelkind, ready to cry.
"Then you were a little fool to come away from your home, wherever that may be," said the man at the bridge-head. "Well, I will let you go, for you look a baby. But do not beg; that is bad."
"Findelkind did it!"
"Then Findelkind was a rogue and a vagabond," said the taker of tolls.
"Oh, no—no—no!"
"Oh, yes—yes—yes, little sauce-box; and take that," said the man, giving him a box on the ear, being angry at contradiction.
Findelkind's head drooped, and he went slowly over the bridge, forgetting that he ought to have thanked the toll taker for a free passage. The world seemed to him very difficult. How had Findelkind done when he had come to bridges?—and, oh, how had Findelkind done when he had been hungry?