Honest Hans was very much frightened.
“Alas!” he said, “help me out of this trouble! You are more at home in these [[51]]parts than I; take my pig and let me have your goose.”
“I shall run some risk if I do,” answered the lad, “but I will not be the cause of your getting into trouble.”
So he took the cord in his hand and drove the pig quickly away by a side path.
Honest Hans, relieved of his anxiety, plodded along towards home with the goose under his arm. “When I really come to think it over,” he said to himself, “I have even gained by this exchange: first, there is the good roast; then the quantity of fat that will drip out of it in roasting and will keep us in goose fat to eat on our bread for a quarter of a year; and last of all there are the fine white feathers, with which I will stuff my pillow, and then I warrant I shall sleep like a top. How delighted my mother will be!”
As he was going through the last village he came to a knife grinder with his cart, singing, as his wheel whirred busily around,
“Scissors and knives I quickly grind,
While my coat flies out in the wind behind.”
[[52]]
Hans stopped to watch him; at last he spoke to him and said, “You appear to have a good business, if I may judge by your merry song.”