Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 8, 1897.djvu/152

 128 something for my son to eat.' Whereupon he replied: 'Leave your son alone and attend to me, for why shall I wait?' The woman answers him: 'If you knew the sense that this young fellow has!' And the woman rose, and took the rice which she had boiled and set it before her son. But he said to his mother: 'Give me more, for I am not full!' and she gave him more, but he did not cease crying. So that man began and spake to the boy: 'You are very impudent, and have no sense; because, if this had been placed before a couple of men, it would have satisfied them.' The boy answered and said to the man: 'You are the one wanting in sense; for you've come out to claim that which is not yours, and you've selected for yourself a business which God does not approve. But, moreover, what do you think of (the result of) my want of sense and of my weeping? Only that it makes my eyes the brighter, and clears my nostrils from their nasty mucus, and I get relief from my head-ache; and, besides, through my having cried, I got an additional quantity of food.' Now when the man heard that he excelled him in sense, he rose, folded his arms, and bowed down to the boy, saying: 'I will not be culpable in your presence, for I did not think that you had sense.' And the man rose and went home, without having committed any wrong.

XXI.—"And the following is the story of the five-year-old boy: There were three companions who went to a strange place; and they entered a town, and stayed at an old woman's. Now they wanted to go to the baths, and they said to the old woman: 'Put out for us everything that's requisite for a wash in the bath.' She accordingly placed everything ready for them, but forgot to put the comb. Now these men delivered to her their money and said to her: 'Don't you give this money to any one of us, except we three are assembled together.' And the woman answered: 'I'll do so.' And they proceeded to go to the baths. Now when they noticed