Page:The folk-tales of the Magyars.djvu/310

 234 the scabbard stopped and slid into the scabbard, and the little boy for a long time gazed at his weapon and wept bitterly. As he was thus weeping in his mother's garden, the king of the country passed outside the fencing; the king heard the sound of crying and stopped his carriage, and thus spoke to his footman: "My dear servant, go to see who is crying in that garden, and ask the cause of it?" The footman obeyed, and on his return gave the following reply to his royal master: "Your majesty, a child is kneeling among the flowers, and cries because his mother has cruelly beaten him." "Bring him here, my dear servant, tell him his king wants him, who has never cried in his life, and cannot bear to hear anyone else cry." The footman brought the child back with him, wiped away his tears, and the king asked the dear little boy whether he would like to go with him as he was willing to adopt him as his son. "I would like to go, majesty, if my mother would let me." "Go, my servant, to this little fellow's mother," said the king to his footman, "and tell her that the king will take her pretty son to his palace and if he behave well will give him half of his realm, and also his prettiest daughter."

The widow, who only a moment ago was so angry, commenced to cry for joy, and placed her son with her own hands into the king's lap, and kissed the monarch's hand. "Don't be so stubborn when you are at your royal father's court as you were at your widow-mother's house," she said to him, and with these words the old woman ran away from her pretty little son, who again cried bitterly. Then the dear little prince begged leave to get down from the carriage; he pulled the little sword up out of the ground, and placed it in the scabbard, where it rattled unceasingly. They had driven a good distance, and the boy had had his cry, when the king said, "Why did you cry so bitterly in the little garden, my dear son?" "Because" replied the little boy "my mother continually scolded me, and also thrashed me cruelly." "And why did your mother thrash you cruelly and scold you?"