“Great as is my haste,” said the boy, “I cannot leave these gentle creatures to drown.” So he ran to a boat that was near by, paddled to the dragon-flies, lifted them to the gunwale of the boat with his paddle, then paddled ashore and started again, leaving the dragon-flies drying their wings in the sun. But before he was gone, they called to him.
“Thank you, kind boy,’ they said. “We fly everywhere, and we shall surely know when you are in trouble, and come to your aid.”
“So!” said the wizard shoemaker when he saw the boy, “you have come back unsuccessful. Neither man nor woman could give you that needle, so how could you expect to get it, I should like to know!”
“But I have the needle!” said the boy. “My friend the porcupine gave it to me.”
The wizard was so enraged at this that he sprang high in air and came down on the floor with a bang that made the windows rattle. “The thread!” he said, “you never could get the thread! Neither man nor woman could give it to you, so how could you expect to get it?”
“But I have the thread!” said the boy. “My good friend the mother-cow gave it to me.”
Thereupon the wizard sprang again in air, coming down with two bangs on the floor, making the windows rattle twice. “But the leather!” he cried, “you never could get the leather! Of that I am sure!”
“I have the leather,” replied the boy. “My good friend the bat gave it to me.”
This time the wizard jumped higher yet, and the bang with which he came down made the windows rattle three times. Then he smiled a cunning smile. “Oh, well!’ he said, “you never can mend it, for all that.”
But the boy took the apron and tried, for all that. Strange to say, he could do little. The needle unthreaded itself as fast as threaded, and the leather persistently curled out of place. He was almost in despair, and the wizard shoemaker was fairly dancing for joy at his ill success, when the three dragon-flies came sailing up. The silver one and the gold one took the wizard shoemaker by each ear and held his head back against the wall. He was in great fear of them, and was trembling like a leaf.
Then the blue one said gently: “Let me show you, little brother. See,” he said, “the needle has two ends; let us try the other end. The thread has two ends as well; let us try the other end of that.”
The boy did so, and the thread fairly leaped into the eye of the needle and remained there.
“Now,” said the dragon-fly, “observe that a piece of leather has two sides; let us try the other side.”
The boy did so, whereupon the leather fairly cuddled into place, and the needle seemed to fly back and forth through it of itself, the thread making so fine a stitch that, when the work was done, which it soon was, the apron showed no patch, nor any sign of one, but was as whole as it had ever been.
When the dragon-flies released the wizard shoemaker, and he saw this, he was so enraged that he sprang clear to the ceiling, banging his head against it, and had no sooner alighted on the floor than he rushed with bowed head through the door, butting it open in his haste; rushed through his front fence in the same way, and went on across a field and through the neighboring wood, where he soon was out of sight; but he could be heard for long after, bang-butting his way along among the trees.
No one has ever seen him come back, but the people of that town, to this day, when they hear a sudden wind crashing through the forest, smile and say, “There goes the wizard shoemaker!”’
As for the boy, he did not wait even a minute to see whether the wizard shoemaker came back or not, but ran home to tell his mother all about it; and I think that he ran faster then than at any other time during the day.
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