o the goat and said,

"My dear goat, are you really full?" The malicious animal answered,

"How can I be full?
There was nothing to pull,
Though I looked all about me--ba! baa!"

"Oh, the wretches!" cried the tailor. "The one as good-for-nothing and
careless as the other. I will no longer have such fools about me;" and
rushing back, in his wrath he laid about him with his yard-wand, and
belaboured his son's back so unmercifully that he ran away out of the
house.

So the old tailor was left alone with the goat. The next day he went out
to the stall, and let out the goat, saying,

"Come, my dear creature, I will take you myself to the willows."

So he led her by the string, and brought her to the green hedges and
pastures where there was plenty of food to her taste, and saying to her,

"Now, for once, you can eat to your heart's content," he left her there
till the evening. Then he returned, and said,

"Well, goat, are you full?"

She answered,

"I am so full,
I could not pull,
Another blade of grass--ba! baa!"

"Then come home," said the tailor, and leading her to her stall, he
fastened her up.

Before he left her he turned once more, saying,

"Now then, for once you are full." But the goat actually cried,

"How can I be full?
There was nothing to pull,
Though I looked all about me--ba! baa!"

When the tailor heard that he marvelled, and saw at once that his three
sons had been sent away without reason.

"Wait a minute," cried he, "you ungrateful creature! It is not enough
merely to drive you away--I will teach you to show your face again among
honourable tailors."

So in haste he went and fetched his razor, and seizing the goat he
shaved her head as smooth as the palm of his hand. And as the
yard-measure was too honourable a weapon, he took the whip and fetched
her such a crack that with many a jump and spring she ran away.

The tailor felt very sad as he sat alone in his house, and would
willingly have had his sons back again, but no one knew where they had
gone.

The eldest son, when he was driven from home, apprenticed himself to a
joiner, and he applied himself diligently to his trade, and when the
time came for him to travel his master gave him a little table, nothing
much to look at, and made of common wood; but it had one great quality.
When any one set it down and said, "Table, be covered!" all at once the
good little table had a clean cloth on it,