So they took him and
flogged him well, and then they sent him home again.
Then the youngest, whose name was Taper Tom, was all for setting out.
But his brothers laughed and jeered at him, and showed him their sore
backs, and his father said it was no use for him to go for he had no
sense. Was it not true that he neither knew anything nor could do
anything? There he sat in the hearth, like a cat, and grubbed in the
ashes and split tapers. That was why they called him "Taper Tom." But
Taper Tom would not give in, and so they got tired of his growling; and
at last he, too, got leave to go to the king's palace to try his luck.
When he got there he did not say that he wished to try to make the
Princess laugh, but asked if he could get work there. No, they had no
place for him, but for all that Taper Tom would not give up. In such a
big palace they must want someone to carry wood and water for the
kitchen maid,--that was what he said. And the king thought it might very
well be, for he, too, got tired of his teasing. In the end Taper Tom
stayed there to carry wood and water for the kitchen maid.
So one day, when he was going to fetch water from the brook, he set eyes
upon a big fish which lay under an old fir stump, where the water had
eaten into the bank, and he put his bucket softly under the fish and
caught it.
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