‘And who is my old friend?’ asked Giglio.
‘When you want anything,’ says the lady, ‘look in this bag, which I leave to you as a present, and be grateful to—’
‘To whom, madam?’ says he.
‘To the Fairy Blackstick,’ says the lady, flying out of the window. And then Giglio asked the conductor if he knew where the lady was?
‘What lady?’ says the man; ‘there has been no lady in this coach, except the old woman, who got out at the last stage.’ And Giglio thought he had been dreaming. But there was the bag which Blackstick had given him lying on his lap; and when he came to the town he took it in his hand and went into the inn.
They gave him a very bad bedroom, and Giglio, when he woke in the morning, fancying himself in the Royal Palace at home, called, ‘John, Charles, Thomas! My chocolate—my dressing-gown—my slippers’; but nobody came. There was no bell, so he went and bawled out for water on the top of the stairs.
The landlady came up.
‘What are you a hollering and a bellaring for here, young man?’ says she.
‘There’s no warm water—no servants; my boots are not even cleaned.’
‘He, he! Clean ‘em yourself,’ says the landlady. ‘You young students give yourselves pretty airs. I never heard such impudence.’