Page:Fairy tales and other stories (Andersen, Craigie).djvu/121

 Rh very good. I wish I were already lying on the highest board in the bath-house.'

And there he lay on the highest board in the vapour bath; but he was lying there in all his clothes, in boots and goloshes, and the hot drops from the ceiling were falling on his face.

'Hi!' he cried, and jumped down to take a plunge bath.

The attendant uttered a loud cry on seeing a person there with all his clothes on. The volunteer had, however, enough presence of mind to whisper to him, 'It's for a wager!' But the first thing he did when he got into his own room was to put a big blister on the nape of his neck, and another on his back, that they might draw out his madness.

Next morning he had a very sore back; and that was all he had got by the goloshes of Fortune.

V

The watchman, whom we assuredly have not yet forgotten, in the meantime thought of the goloshes, which he had found and brought to the hospital. He took them away; but as neither the lieutenant nor any one in the street would own them, they were taken to the police office.

'They look exactly like my own goloshes,' said one of the copying gentlemen, as he looked at the unowned articles and put them beside his own. 'More than a shoe-maker's eye is required to distinguish them from one another.'

'Mr. Copying Clerk,' said a servant, coming in with some papers.

The copying clerk turned and spoke to the man: when he had done this, he turned to look at the goloshes again; he was in great doubt if the right-hand or the left-hand pair belonged to him.

'It must be those that are wet,' he thought. Now here