“You certainly have known how to manage your affairs,” said the grinder. “Now, if you could manage to hear the money jingling in your pockets when you got up in the morning, you would indeed have made your fortune.”
“How shall I set about that?” asked Hans.
“You must be a grinder like me—nothing is needed for it but a whetstone; everything else will come of itself. I have one here which certainly is a little damaged, but you need not give me anything for it but your goose. Are you willing?”
“How can you ask me such a question?” said Hans. “Why, I shall be the happiest person in the world. If I can have some money every time I put my hand in my pocket, what more should I have to trouble about?”
So he handed him the goose, and took the whetstone in exchange.
“Now,” said the grinder, lifting up an ordinary large stone which lay near on the road, “here is another good stone into the bargain. You can hammer out all your old nails on it to straighten them. Take it, and carry it off.”
Hans shouldered the stone, and went on his way with a light heart, and his eyes shining with joy. “I must have been born in a lucky hour!” he cried; “everything happens just as I want it, and as it would happen to a Sunday’s child.”
In the mean time, as he had been on foot since daybreak, he began to feel very tired, and he was also very hungry, as he had eaten all his provisions at once, in his joy at his bargain over the cow. At last he could hardly walk any farther, and he was obliged to stop every minute to rest. Then the stones were frightfully heavy, and he could not get rid of the thought that it would be very nice if he were not obliged to carry them any farther. He dragged himself like a snail to a well in the fields, meaning to rest and refresh himself with a draught of the cool water. So as not to injure the stones by sitting on them, he laid them carefully on the edge of the well. Then he sat down, and was about to stoop down to drink when he inadvertently gave them a little push, and both the stones fell straight into the water.
When Hans saw them disappear before his very eyes he jumped for joy, and then knelt down and thanked God, with tears in his eyes, for having shown him this further grace, and relieved him of the heavy stones (which were all that remained to trouble him) without giving him anything to reproach himself with. “There is certainly no one under the sun so happy as I,” he said.
And so, with a light heart, free from every care, he bounded on home to his mother.