He
minded how she'd nursed him when he was a tiddy brat, and helped him
with his lessons, and cooked his dinners, and mended his clouts, and
bore with his foolishness; and he felt sorrier and sorrier, while he
began to sob and greet.
"Oh, mother, mother!" says he, "who'll take care of me now? Thou
shouldn't have left me alone, for I liked thee better than everything!"
And as he said that, he thought of the words of the wise woman. "Hi,
yi!" says he, "must I take mother's heart to her?"
"No! I can't do that," says he. "What'll I do? what'll I do to get that
pottle o' brains, now I'm alone in the world?" So he thought and thought
and thought, and next day he went and borrowed a sack, and bundled his
mother in, and carried it on his shoulder up to the wise woman's
cottage.
"Gode'en, missis," says he, "I reckon I've fetched thee the right thing
this time, surely," and he plumped the sack down kerflap! in the
doorsill.
"Maybe," says the wise woman, "but read me this, now, what's yellow and
shining but isn't gold?"
And he scratched his head, and thought and thought, but he couldn't
tell.
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