“‘No, I don’t like to talk about myself,’ retorted the Pot. ‘Let us get up an evening entertainment. I will begin. I will tell a story from real life, something that everyone has experienced, so that we can easily imagine the situation, and take pleasure in it. On the Baltic, by the Danish shore—’
“‘That’s a pretty beginning!’ cried all the Plates. ‘That will be a story we shall like.’
“‘Yes, it happened to me in my youth, when I lived in a family where the furniture was polished, the floors scoured, and new curtains were put up every fortnight.’
“‘What an interesting way you have of telling a story!’ said the Carpet Broom. ‘One can tell directly that a man is speaking who has been in woman’s society. There’s something pure runs through it.’
“And the Pot went on telling the story, and the end was as good as the beginning.
“All the Plates rattled with joy, and the Carpet Broom brought some green parsley out of the dust hole, and put it like a wreath on the Pot, for he knew that it would vex the others. ‘If I crown him to-day,’ it thought, ‘he will crown me tomorrow.’
“‘Now I’ll dance,’ said the Fire Tongs; and they danced. Preserve us! how that implement could lift up one leg! The old chair-cushion burst to see it. ‘Shall I be crowned too?’ thought the Tongs; and indeed a wreath was awarded.
“‘They’re only common people, after all!’ thought the Matches.
“Now the Tea Urn was to sing; but she said she had taken cold and could not sing unless she felt boiling within. But that was only affectation: she did not want to sing, except when she was in the parlor with the grand people.
“In the window sat an old Quill Pen, with which the maid generally wrote: there was nothing remarkable about this pen, except that it had been dipped too deep into the ink, but she was proud of that. ‘If the Tea Urn won’t sing,’ she said, ‘she may leave it alone. Outside hangs a nightingale in a cage, and he can sing. He hasn’t had any education, but this evening we’ll say nothing about that.’