The Pink Fairy Book, part 13 · page 21 2101But Hans was also tired of service now.102Of all the gold and silver he brought with him he let the squire keep one half, and he was glad enough, both for the money and at getting rid of Hans.103The other half he took home to his father the smith in Furreby.104To him also he said, ‘Farewell;’ he was now tired of living on shore among mortal men, and preferred to go home again to his mother.checked by a teacher105Since that time no one has ever seen Hans, the Mermaid’s son.106Peter Bull107From the Danish.108There once lived in Denmark a peasant and his wife who owned a very good farm, but had no children.109They often lamented to each other that they had no one of their own to inherit all the wealth that they possessed.110They continued to prosper, and became rich people, but there was no heir to it all.111One year it happened that they owned a pretty little bull-calf, which they called Peter.112It was the prettiest little creature they had ever seen--so beautiful and so wise that it understood everything that was said to it, and so gentle and so full of play that both the man and his wife came to be as fond of it as if it had been their own child.113One day the man said to his wife, ‘I wonder, now, whether our parish clerk could teach Peter to talk; in that case we could not do better than adopt him as our son, and let him inherit all that we possess.’114‘Well, I don’t know,’ said his wife, ‘our clerk is tremendously learned, and knows much more than his Paternoster, and I could almost believe that he might be able to teach Peter to talk, for Peter has a wonderfully good head too.115You might at least ask him about it.’1 2← previousThe Pink Fairy Book, part 12next →The Pink Fairy Book, part 14↑ back to The Pink Fairy BookThis page in Markdown → https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg5615/13/page/2/