Page:Chinese Fables and Folk Stories.djvu/62

58 When time came for the evening meal, his mother called him, but he would not eat. He said, "I am sorry about Wa-Na-Juch, and I can not eat food. Wait until my father comes, so that I may tell him all I have done."

Once Si-Ma-Quong and two other boys were trying to peel fruit that grew in a neighbor's garden, but the peach skins were tight and the boys were not skilled. Their task seemed not likely to be finished, when a man passing by said, "I will tell you how to peel the peaches. Get boiling water, drop the peaches in and take them out in a very little time, and then you can pull off their skins easily."

The man whose peaches they were peeling came soon, and saw that the task was finished. He looked at the fruit and said, "I never saw fruit peeled with so little waste. How did you do it?"

They showed him the hot water and he said, "You are very wise to know first this way of peeling fruit. I will give a piece of silver to each of the boys who made the discovery."

He asked the other two, "Did you?" and "Did you?" and they both said, "Yes." He then gave them the silver, but Si-Ma-Quong said, "No, I do not want the silver. We did not ourselves know how to remove the peach skins. A strange man showed us."