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EVERYTHING IN ITS RIGHT PLACE 457
times had grown too high for their cornfields, were tumbled into the ditch. It was a dangerous flute, that : luckily, it burst at the first note ; and that was a good thing, for then it was put back into the owner's pocket. : Everything in its right place.'
The day afterwards not a word was said about this marvellous event; and thence has come the expression, ' pocketing the flute.' Everything was in its usual order, only that the two old portraits of the dealer and the goose-girl hung on the wall in the banqueting-hall. They had been blown up there, and as one of the real connoisseurs said they had been painted by a master's hand, they remained where they were, and were restored. One did not know before that they were any good, and how should it have been known ? Now they hung in the place of honour: ' Everything in its right place.'
And to that it will come hereafter; for hereafter is long —longer than this story. |
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THE GOBLIN AND THE HUCKSTER
There was once a regular student : he lived in a garret, and nothing at all belonged to him; but there was also once a regular huckster : he lived on the ground floor, and the whole house was his ; and the Goblin lodged with him, for here, every Christmas-eve, there was a dish of porridge, with a great piece of butter floating in the middle. The huckster could give that, and consequently the Goblin stuck to the huckster's shop, and that was very interesting.
One evening the student came through the back door to buy candles and cheese for himself. He had no one to send, and that's why he came himself. He procured what he wanted and paid for it, and the huckster and his wife both nodded a ' good evening ' to him ; and the woman was one who could do more than merely nod— she had an immense power of tongue ! And the student nodded too, and then suddenly stood still, reading the sheet of paper in which the cheese had been wrapped. It was a leaf torn out of an old book, a book that ought not to have been torn up, a book that was full of poetry.
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