"How can I have eaten well?
I only frisked about the bed,
And nothing found to feed upon."
When the old man heard this he was horrified, for he saw at once how things had stood all the time, and that he had driven his boys away for no reason whatever.
"Oh, you brute!" he said. "You, too, shall be driven out; and I will take care that you never dare to appear among honest tailors again."
So he rushed into the house for his razor, and shaved the Goat's head as smooth as your face; and because the yard measure was too good to use upon him, he fetched his whip and gave the Goat such a sound thrashing that it was only too glad to scamper out of the stable and make off as fast as its legs could carry it.
When the Tailor returned into his house he was overcome with sorrow for the three sons whom he had driven from home, and who were wandering no one knew where.
However, the eldest boy had apprenticed himself to a carpenter, and he worked with him well and merrily till his time was out. Then his master gave him a table, which, though it looked only like an ordinary common wooden one, yet if its owner stood before it and said, "Table, Table, spread yourself," it at once became covered with all sorts of good things, meat and wine and everything necessary for a splendid meal.
"Now I shall never want again," the young man said to himself, and he went on journeying merrily, never troubling himself whether his lodging was good or bad, or whether there was anything to eat or not.
Sometimes he did not go to an inn at all, but just stopped where he was, under a hedge or in a wood, and there he would put down his table and cry, "Table, Table, spread yourself," and then in the twinkle of an eye he had before him as much as he liked to eat and drink.
One day he made up his mind to turn his steps homeward, as his father's anger, he knew, was sure to have died down by then, and they could live very comfortably together with his lucky table. It happened that one evening he came to an inn that was full of people, who invited him to eat in their company.