“Oh!” said his old dame, “I don’t care a farthing about such a pack of rubbish; if they don’t like it they may lump it, and be off; but just do come and look at this lad out in the yard; so handsome a fellow I never saw in all my born days; and, if you’ll do as I wish, we’ll ask him to step in and treat him a little, for, poor lad, he seems to have a hard fight of it.”
“Have you lost the little brains you had, Goody?” said the husband, whose eyes glistened with rage; “into the kitchen with you, and mind the fire; but don’t stand there glowering after strange men.”
So the wife had nothing left for it but to go into the kitchen, and look after the cooking; as for the lad outside, she couldn’t get leave to ask him in, or to treat him either; but just as she was about spitting the pig in the kitchen, she made an excuse for running out into the yard, and then and there she gave Boots a pair of scissors, of such a kind that they cut of themselves out of the air the loveliest clothes any one ever saw, silk and satin, and all that was fine.
“This you shall have because you are so handsome,” said the innkeeper’s wife.
So when the two elder brothers had crammed themselves with roast and boiled, they wished to be off again, and Boots had to stand behind their carriage, and be their servant; and so they travelled a good way, till they came to another inn. There the two brothers again alighted and went indoors, but Boots, who had no money, they wouldn’t have inside with them; no, he must wait outside and watch the luggage. “And mind”, they said, “if any one asks whose servant you are, say we are two foreign Princes.”
But the same thing happened now as happened before; while Boots stood hanging about out in the yard, the innkeeper’s wife came to the window and saw him, and she too fell in love with him, just like the first innkeeper’s wife; and there she stood and stared, for she thought she could never have her fill of looking at him. Then her husband came running through the room with something the two Princes had ordered.
“Don’t stand there staring like a cow at a barn-door, but take this into the kitchen, and look after your fish-kettle, Goody”, said the man; “don’t you see what grand people we have in the house to-day?”
“I don’t care a farthing for such a pack of rubbish”, said the wife; “if they don’t like what they get they may lump it, and eat what they brought with them. But just do come here, and see what you shall see! Such a handsome fellow as walks here, out in the yard, I never saw in all my born days. Shan’t we ask him in and treat him a little; he looks as if he needed it, poor chap?” and then she went on:
“Such a love! such a love!”
“You never had much wit, and the little you had is clean gone, I can see”, said the man, who was much more angry than the first innkeeper, and chased his wife back, neck and crop, into the kitchen.