Page:Popular Tales of the Germans (Volume 2).djvu/114



THOUGH the favourite of the Gnome had been crupulouly careful to conceal the real origin of his good fortune, let other olicitants hould teize his patron by importunate applications of the ame kind, the affair, nevertheles, at lat became the country’s talk; for when the huband’s ecret hovers between the wife’s lips, the lightet gale will blow it away, as eay as a oap-bubble from the bowl of a tobacco-pipe. Mrs. Dobbins communicated it to a dicreet neighbour; he to her goip, the village barber—and he of coure to all his cutomers; o it was noied abroad in the village, and afterwards through the whole parih. At the encouraging tale the broken houe-keepers, the idlers, and the pendthrifts pricked up their ears;