So off he went, but the way was long, and he walked and walked; but at last he came to the North Wind’s house.
“Good day!” said the lad, “and thank you for coming to see us yesterday.”
“GOOD DAY!” answered the North Wind, for his voice was loud and gruff, “AND THANKS FOR COMING TO SEE ME. WHAT DO YOU WANT?”
“Oh!” answered the lad, “I only wished to ask you to be so good as to let me have back that meal you took from me on the safe steps, for we haven’t much to live on; and if you’re to go on snapping up the morsel we have, there’ll be nothing for it but to starve.”
“I haven’t got your meal,” said the North Wind; “but if you are in such need, I’ll give you a cloth which will get you everything you want, if you only say ‘Cloth, spread yourself, and serve up all kind of good dishes!’”
With this the lad was well content. But, as the way was so long he couldn’t get home in one day, so he turned into an inn on the way; and when they were going to sit down to supper he laid the cloth on a table which stood in the corner, and said,—
“Cloth, spread yourself, and serve up all kinds of good dishes.”
He had scarce said so before the cloth did as it was bid; and all who stood by thought it a fine thing, but most of all the landlady. So, when all were fast asleep, at dead of night, she took the lad’s cloth, and put another in its stead, just like the one he had got from the North Wind, but which couldn’t so much as serve up a bit of dry bread.
So, when the lad woke, he took his cloth and went off with it, and that day he got home to his mother.
“Now,” said he, “I’ve been to the North Wind’s house, and a good fellow he is, for he gave me this cloth, and when I only say to it, ‘Cloth, spread yourself, and serve up all kind of good dishes,’ I get any sort of food I please.”
“All very true, I dare say,” said his mother; “but seeing is believing, and I shan’t believe it till I see it.”
So the lad made haste, drew out a table, laid the cloth on it, and said,—
“Cloth, spread yourself, and serve up all kind of good dishes.”
But never a bit of dry bread did the cloth serve up.
“Well!” said the lad, “there’s no help for it but to go to the North Wind again;” and away he went.
So he came to where the North Wind lived late in the afternoon.