“Yes, your majesty; and some of the finest golden pears in your majesty’s whole empire.”
The Kaiser was so delighted to hear this that he removed the covering of leaves himself. But proportionately great was his fury when he found that under the leaves was nothing but offensive sweepings off the road! The attendants who stood by were all equally indignant, and waited not for an order from the Kaiser to carry the boy off to close prison, in punishment for so great an insult as he appeared to have offered.
“It is all that old hag by the fountain,” he said to himself, the first day and the second; but when the penitential discipline of the prison led him to think more closely over his own conduct, he acknowledged that he had himself been in the wrong in telling a falsehood.
Meantime, his father, finding he did not return, said to his other sons, “You see what it is to be as wide-awake as your elder brother; he has obviously taken care of his basket of golden pears, and so pleased the Kaiser that he has given him some great office near his person, and made him a rich man.”
“I am just as sharp as he,” said the second brother: “give me a Krattle of the pears, and let me take them to the Kaiser, and become a rich man too; only I won’t keep it all for myself. I will send for you, and make you a rich man too.”
“Well said, my son,” replied the father; “for I have worked hard for you all my life, and it is meet that in my old age you should share your ease, which I helped you to attain, with me.”
And as the season for pears had just come round again, he plaited another Krattle, like the first, and lined it with fresh leaves, and laid in it a goodly show of the golden pears.
The second son took the basket, and went his way even in better spirits than his elder brother, for he had the conviction of his success to encourage him. But the sun was as hot as it had been the previous year, and when, in the middle of the third day, he came to the fountain by the wayside he was glad to sit down to rest and refresh himself.
The doubled-up old woman stood washing her rags at the fountain and singing her ditty all out of tune. She stopped her croaking, however, to ask him the same question as she had asked his brother; and, as he and his brother had agreed together on what they considered a clever answer, he now gave her the same, which she received by repeating the menace she had ejaculated the first time. And when he brought his basket to the Kaiser it also was found to be filled with street-sweepings instead of pears! With even more of indignation they hurried him off to prison, putting him in the next cell to his brother.
Meantime the year was wearing away, and the promised tidings of good fortune not reaching the father, he got very uneasy. The third son had no pretension to the sharpness his brothers boasted. He was a very dull boy, and often had to endure being laughed at by the others for his slow parts.