Three Years without Wages
ONCE on a time there was a poor householder who had an only son, but he was so lazy and unhandy, this son, that he would neither mix with folk nor turn his hand to anything in the world. So the father said—
"If I'm not to go on for ever feeding this long lazy fellow, I must pack him off a long way, where no one knows him. If he runs away then it won't be so easy for him to come home."
Yes! the man took his son with him, and went about far and wide offering him as a serving-man; but there was no one who would have him.
So last of all they came to a rich man, of whom the story went that he turned a penny over seven times before he let it go. He was to take the lad as a ploughboy, and there he was to serve three years without wages. But when the three years were over the man was to go to the town two mornings, and buy the first thing he met that was for sale, but the third morning the lad was to go himself to the town, and buy the first thing he met, and these three things he was to have instead of wages.
Well, the lad served his three years out, and
179
