Then one of them took
the other aside and said, "Hark, the little fellow would make our fortune
if we exhibited him in a large town, for money. We will buy him." They
went to the peasant and said, "Sell us the little man. He shall be well
treated with us." "No," replied the father, "he is the apple of my eye,
and all the money in the world cannot buy him from me." Thumbling,
however, when he heard of the bargain, had crept up the folds of his
father's coat, placed himself on his shoulder, and whispered in his ear,
"Father do give me away, I will soon come back again." Then the father
parted with him to the two men for a handsome bit of money. "Where wilt
thou sit?" they said to him. "Oh just set me on the rim of your hat, and
then I can walk backwards and forwards and look at the country, and still
not fall down." They did as he wished, and when Thumbling had taken leave
of his father, they went away with him. They walked until it was dusk,
and then the little fellow said, "Do take me down, I want to come down."
The man took his hat off, and put the little fellow on the ground by
the wayside, and he leapt and crept about a little between the sods,
and then he suddenly slipped into a mouse-hole which he had sought
out.
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