“Good-morning, Urban,” he said, “I have come to ask a favour of you. Will you be so good as to allow me a glance into your looking-glass?”
“With pleasure, there it stands,” he said laughing heartily, and the customer who was being shaved laughed also. “You are a handsome little fellow,” the barber went on, “tall and slim, a neck like a swan, hands as dainty as a queen’s, and as pretty a little nose as one could see anywhere. It is no wonder that you are conceited, and wish to take a glance at yourself. Well, you are welcome to the use of my mirrors, for it shall never be said of me that I was so jealous of your good looks I would not lend you my mirror to admire them in.” Shrieks of laughter greeted the barber’s words, but poor little Jacob, who had seen himself reflected in the mirror, could not keep the tears from his eyes. “No wonder you did not recognise your son, Mother dear,” he said to himself, “in the happy days when you were wont to parade him proudly before the neighbours’ eyes, he bore little resemblance to the thing he has now become.”
Poor fellow, his eyes were small and set like a pig’s, his nose was enormous and reached beyond his chin, his neck had disappeared altogether, and his head had sunk down between his shoulders, so that it was painful to attempt to move it either to the right or left. He was no taller than he had been seven years before, but his back and his chest were bowed out in such a manner that they resembled a well-tilled sack supported upon two weak little legs. His arms, however, had grown so long that they hung down almost to his feet, and his coarse brown hands were the size of those of a full-grown man, with ugly spider-like fingers. The handsome, lively little Jacob had been changed into an ugly and repulsive-looking dwarf.
Jacob, who had seen himself reflected in the mirror, could not keep the tears from his eyes. (P. [128].)
He thought once more of the morning on which the old witch had fingered his mother’s goods and when he had twitted her with her large nose and ugly hands. Everything he had found fault with in her she had given him now, with the exception of the thin neck, for he had no neck at all.
“Surely you have admired yourself sufficiently,” said the barber laughingly. “Never in my dreams have I seen such a comical fellow as you, and I have a proposal to make to you. It is true I have a great many customers, but not quite so many as I had at one time, for my rival, Barber Lather, has come across a giant and has engaged him to stand at his door and invite the people to enter. Now a giant is no very great wonder, but you are, my little man. Enter into my service, and I will give you board and lodging and clothing free, and all you will have to do is to stand at my door and ask folks to come in and be shaved, and hand the towels, soap and so on to the customers. I shall get more customers and you may be sure you will receive a good many coins for yourself.”
The little fellow was inwardly very much hurt that he should have been invited to act as a barber’s decoy; but he answered quite politely that he did not wish for such employment and walked out of the shop.
His one consolation was that, however much the old witch had altered his body, she had had no control over his spirit. He felt that his mind had become enlarged and improved, and he knew himself to be wiser and more intelligent than he had been seven years previously. He wasted no time in bewailing the loss of his good looks, but what did grieve him was the thought that he had been driven like a dog from his father’s door, and therefore he determined to make one more effort to convince his mother of his identity.
He returned to the market-place and begged her to listen quietly to him. He reminded her of the day on which the old woman had taken him away and recalled to her many incidents of his childhood. Then he told her how, transformed into a squirrel, he had served the wicked fairy for seven years, and how his present hideous features had been given him because he had found fault with the old woman’s features.