lay hands on. But busy
though they seemed, they found time to whisper to each other:

'If we can only get hold of that basket it will make our fortune!'

So they began by inviting Father Grumbler to sit down to the table,
and brought out the best wine in the cellar, hoping it might loosen his
tongue. But Father Grumbler was wiser than they gave him credit for, and
though they tried in all manner of ways to find out who had given him
the basket, he put them off, and kept his secret to himself. Unluckily,
though he did not SPEAK, he did drink, and it was not long before he
fell fast asleep. Then the woman fetched from her kitchen a basket, so
like the magic one that no one, without looking very closely, could tell
the difference, and placed it in Father Grumbler's hand, while she hid
the other carefully away.

It was dinner time when the man awoke, and, jumping up hastily, he set
out for home, where he found all the children gathered round a basin of
thin soup, and pushing their wooden bowls forward, hoping to have the
first spoonful. Their father burst into the midst of them, bearing his
basket, and crying:

'Don't spoil your appetites, children, with that stuff. Do you see this
basket? Well, I have only got to say, "Little basket, little basket,
do your duty," and you will see what will happen. Now you shall say it
instead of me, for a treat.'

The children, wondering and delighted, repeated the words, but nothing
happened. Again and again they tried, but the basket was only a basket,
with a few scales of fish sticking to the bottom, for the innkeeper's
wife had taken it to market the day before.

'What is the matter with the thing?' cried the father at last, snatching
the basket from them, and turning it all over, grumbling and swearing
while he did so, under the eyes of his astonished wife and children, who
did not know whether to cry or to laugh.

'It certainly smells of fish,' he said, and then he stopped, for a
sudden thought had come to him.

'Suppose it is not mine at all; supposing--Ah, the scoundrels!'

And without listening to his wife and children, who were frightened at
his strange conduct and begged him to stay at home, he ran across to the
tavern and burst open the door.

'Can I do anything for you, Father Grumbler?' asked the innkeeper's wife
in her softest voice.

'I have taken the wrong basket--by mistake, of course,' said he. 'Here
is yours, will you give me back my own?'

'Why, what ar