'Are you the greengrocer Hannah?' she asked in a disagreeable, croaking voice, shaking her head to and fro. 'Yes, I am,' replied the cobbler's wife; 'what is your pleasure?' 'We'll see, we'll see, we'll look at your herbs--look at your herbs, to see whether you have what I want,' answered the old woman; and stooping down she thrust her dark brown, unsightly hands into the herb-basket, and took up some that were beautifully spread out, with her long spider-like fingers, bringing them one by one up to her long nose, and smelling them all over. The poor woman felt her heart quake when she saw the old hag handle her herbs in this manner, but she dared not say anything to her, the purchasers having a right to examine the things as they pleased; besides which, she felt a singular awe in the presence of this old woman. After having searched the whole basket, she muttered, 'Wretched stuff, wretched herbs, nothing that I want--were much better fifty years ago--wretched stuff! wretched stuff!' Little Jacob was vexed at these words. 'Hark ye,' he cried boldly, 'you are an impudent old woman; first you thrust your nasty brown fingers into these beautiful herbs and squeeze them together, then you hold them up to your long nose, so that no one seeing this will buy them after you, and you abuse our goods, calling them wretched stuff, though the duke's cook himself buys all his herbs of us.' The old woman leered at the bold boy, laughed disagreeably, and said in a hoarse voice, 'Little son, little son, you like my nose then, my beautiful long nose? You shall have one too in the middle of your face that shall reach down to your chin.' While she spoke thus she shuffled up to another basket containing cabbages. She took the most beautiful white heads up in her hand, squeezed them together till they squeaked, and then throwing them into the basket again without regard to order, said as before, 'Wretched things! wretched cabbages!' 'Don't wriggle your head about in that ugly fashion,' cried the little boy, rather frightened; 'why your neck is as thin as a cabbage-stalk and might easily break, then your head would fall into the basket, and who would buy of us?' 'You don't like such thin necks then, eh?' muttered the old woman, with a laugh. 'You shall have none at all; your head shall be fixed between your shoulders, that it may not fall down from the little body.' 'Don't talk such nonsense to the little boy,' at length said the cobbler's wife, indignant at the long-looking, examining, and smelling of the things; 'if you wish to buy anything be quick, for you scare away all my other customers.' 'Well, be it as you say,' cried the old woman, with a furious look; 'I will buy these six heads of cabbages; but you see I must support myself on my stick, and cannot carry anything, therefore allow your little son to carry them home for me, and I will reward him.'