Читать книгу Tales of Laughter - Группа авторов - Страница 17

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A certain housewife had a young servant lad who devoured everything eatable that lay in his way. He would rummage in the storeroom until he smelled out something good, and would give himself no rest until he had devoured it all.

Now, the woman had a jar of preserved fruit, and, as she feared that the youngster would eat it and leave her nothing to put into her pies, she said to him:

“My good boy, you have now eaten everything that I have except this jam, and you have left this just as if you knew that it was poisoned. See how kind Heaven is to have preserved you from it. One single spoonful is enough to kill one instantly, so I warn you not to touch it unless you want to die.”

“Very well,” answered the boy.

On the next Sunday, as the woman was getting ready to go to mass, she said to the boy: “Cook the soup and boil the meat and roast this duck; we will have a good dinner to-day. See that you have all done and ready when I come home.”

“Very well; it shall all be done,” answered the boy.

When the woman was gone he cooked the soup and boiled the meat, and then he put the duck upon the spit to roast. When he saw what a delicious brown crisp was forming all over the duck, he thought, “It can roast itself another one,” and ate the crisp all off. He turned the spit and turned it, but the second brown crisp never came.

When he saw this, he thought: “When the mistress comes home she will pepper me well,” and he began to consider how he could escape a beating. In his desperation he remembered the jar of poison against which his mistress had warned him the day before. With a sudden resolution he went into the storeroom and devoured the whole jarful of preserved fruit, and then crouched down in a corner to wait for death.

Presently his mistress came home and cried out angrily: “What have you done to this duck?” She was about to belabor him well, when he cried: “Ah, leave me in peace, dear mistress! I shall die in a minute, anyway, for I have eaten up all the poison!”

At this the woman broke out into a laugh and could not refuse to forgive him. The duck and the preserves, however, were gone all the same.