“Never mind where I got it; you can see that it is a good one, and the
water that turns it will never freeze,” said the man. So he ground meat
and drink, and all kinds of good things, to last all Christmas-tide, and
on the third day he invited all his friends to come to a feast.
Now when the rich brother saw all that there was at the banquet and in
the house, he was both vexed and angry, for he grudged everything his
brother had. “On Christmas Eve he was so poor that he came to me and
begged for a trifle, for God’s sake, and now he gives a feast as if he
were both a count and a king!” thought he. “But, for heaven’s sake, tell
me where you got your riches from,” said he to his brother.
“From behind the door,” said he who owned the mill, for he did not
choose to satisfy his brother on that point; but later in the evening,
when he had taken a drop too much, he could not refrain from telling how
he had come by the hand-mill. “There you see what has brought me all my
wealth!” said he, and brought out the mill, and made it grind first one
thing and then another. When the brother saw that, he insisted on having
the mill, and after a great deal of persuasion got it; but he had to
give three hundred dollars for it, and the poor brother was to keep it
till the haymaking was over, for he thought: “If I keep it as long as
that, I can make it grind meat and drink that will last many a long
year.” During that time you may imagine that the mill did not grow
rusty, and when hay-harvest came the rich brother got it, but the other
had taken good care not to teach him how to stop it. It was evening when
the rich man got the mill home, and in the morning he bade the old woman
go out and spread the hay after the mowers, and he would attend to the
house himself that day, he said.
So, when dinner-time drew near, he set the mill on the kitchen-table,
and said: “Grind herrings and milk pottage, and do it both quickly and
well.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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