Jenny and her husband agreed to this eagerly and just as they were the King took them home with him to the castle. He lodged them in a room with golden furniture, he gave them fine clothes to wear, and for food he had them served the choicest delicacies in the world.
As they sat eating their first royal meal, he came in to them carrying in his hands a covered dish of silver. He put the dish down in the center of the table.
“Now, my friends,” he said, “I promised to maintain you in this ease and luxury provided you obeyed me in one thing. You see this silver dish. I forbid you ever to lift the cover. If you disobey me, that moment I shall take from you your fine clothes and send you back to your poverty and misery.”
With that the King left them and they stuffed themselves to their hearts’ content with the delicate foods set before them.
They were so busy, eating and drinking and admiring themselves in their fine clothes, that for the first day they didn’t give the covered dish a thought. The second day the wife noticed it and said:
“That’s the thing we’re not to touch. Well, for my part I don’t want to touch it. I don’t want to do anything but eat and sleep and try on my pretty new clothes.”
By the third day they had eaten so much and so steadily that they were no longer hungry and when they lay down on the big soft bed they no longer fell instantly asleep.
“Dear me,” Jenny began whining, “I don’t know what’s the matter with this food! It doesn’t taste as good as it used to! Maybe the cook has grown careless! I think we ought to complain to the King. I’m beginning to feel very uncomfortable and I haven’t any appetite at all! I wonder what’s in that covered dish. Perhaps it’s something to eat, something perfectly delicious! I’ve half a mind to lift the cover and see.”
“Now just you leave that silver dish alone!” the man growled. He, too, had been eating too much and was feeling peevish. “Don’t you remember what the King said?”
“Pooh!” cried Jenny. “What do I care what the King said! I think he was just poking fun at us telling us we mustn’t lift the cover of that silver dish. After all a dish is a dish and it’s no crime to lift a cover even if it is made of silver!”