“I wonder now”, he said to his wife, “why suitors no longer come to woo our lass, who is so rich. ’Twould be odd if no body cared to have her, for money she has, and more she shall have. I think I’d better just go off to the Stargazers, and ask them whom she shall have, for not a soul comes to us now.”
“But how”, asked the wife, “can the Stargazers answer that?”
“Can’t they?” said Peter; “why! they read all things in the stars.”
So he took with him a great bag of money, and set off to the Stargazers, and asked them to be so good as to look at the stars, and tell him the husband his daughter was to have. Well! the Stargazers looked and looked, but they said they could see nothing about it. But Peter begged them to look better, and to tell him the truth; he would pay them well for it. So the Stargazers looked better, and at last they said that his daughter’s husband was to be the miller’s son, who was only just born, down at the mill below Rich Peter’s house. Then Peter gave the Stargazers a hundred dollars, and went home with the answer he had got. Now, he thought it too good a joke that his daughter should wed one so newly born, and of such poor estate. He said this to his wife, and added:
“I wonder now if they would sell me the boy; then I’d soon put him out of the way?”
“I daresay they would”, said his wife; “you know they’re very poor.”
So Peter went down to the mill, and asked the miller’s wife whether she would sell him her son; she should get a heap of money for him?
“No!” that she wouldn’t.
“Well!” said Peter, “I’m sure I can’t see why you shouldn’t; you’ve hard work enough as it is to keep hunger out of the house, and the boy won’t make it easier, I think.”
But the mother was so proud of the boy, she couldn’t part with him. So when the miller came home, Peter said the same thing to him, and gave his word to pay six hundred dollars for the boy, so that they might buy themselves a farm of their own, and not have to grind other folks’ corn, and to starve when they ran short of water. The miller thought it was a good bargain, and he talked over his wife; and the end was, that Rich Peter got the boy. The mother cried and sobbed, but Peter comforted her by saying the boy should be well cared for; only they had to promise never to ask after him, for he said he meant to send him far away to other lands, so that he might learn foreign tongues.