THE PEDLER AND THE PUDDING.
One day his mother was making a pudding, and that he might see how it was made, Tom climbed on the top of the bowl; but his foot happening to slip, he fell over head and ears into it, and his mother not seeing him, she stirred him into the batter, and then popped the whole into the pot.
The hot water made Tom kick and struggle, and his mother, seeing the pudding jump up and down in the pot, thought it was bewitched. A pedlar going by at that moment, she gave him the pudding, which he put in his pack and then walked on. As soon as Tom could get the batter out of his mouth, he began to cry out. This so frightened the pedler that he flung the pudding over a fence, and took to his heels. The pudding was broken by the fall, and poor Tom crawled out and ran home.
TOM LANDS IN THE HOT SOUP.
Tom never was any bigger; but as he grew older he grew cunning and sly. When he played with boys for cherry-stones, and had lost his own, he used to creep into his playmates’ bags, fill his pockets, and come out to play again. One day, as he was doing this, the owner chanced to see him. “Ah, ha, my little Tom,” said he, “I have caught you at last; now I will punish you for stealing.” So he drew the bag-string tight about his neck, and then shaking the bag, Tom’s legs and thighs were so sadly bruised, that he was thrown into a raging fever.
Just at this time the queen of the fairies came in a coach drawn by six flying mice, and placing Tom by her side, drove through the air to her palace in fairy land, where she kept him till he was restored to health. Then, taking advantage of a fair wind, she blew him straight to the court of king Arthur. But just as Tom was about to land in the palace-yard, the king’s cook happened to pass with a huge bowl of soup, into which Tom fell plump, and splashed the hot soup all in the cook’s face and eyes.
