The fable of Clever Tommy

Once upon a time, there was a pair of farm brothers. The elder brother was named Guli, who was honest and honest, and the younger brother was called Tommy, who was extremely smart.

One day, Guli heard that a rich man wanted to hire a long-term worker, so he ran to give it a try.

The rich man was a cunning man. He said to Gu Li: "I want to hire a long-term worker, but I must make it clear: If you resign, I will cut off your nose and ears; if I If I fire you, you will cut off my nose and ears. None of us will regret it!" Gu Li asked: "How much do I earn per year?" The rich man said: "I never pay any wages. However, I will give you a ball of rice served with leaves every day.”

The honest Guli agreed vaguely.

A few weeks later, Tommy noticed that his brother had lost a lot of weight, and he asked with concern why. Guli told his brother full of grievances that the rich man only gave him a rice ball filled with a small leaf every day.

Tommy said: "How can this work? Why don't you resign?"

"Alas!" Guli sighed and said: "We had already agreed, if If I quit my job, he will cut off my nose and ears!"

The next day, Tommy came to the rich man's house and said, "My brother is sick and I will work for him from now on. Okay?”

The rich man happily agreed when he saw that Tommy was strong and had more money to play than his brother.

The next day, Tommy finished his work at the rich man’s house and took a banana leaf to the kitchen to serve rice.

The rich man yelled: "Oh! Why did you take such a big leaf!"

Tommy said: "You only said you would give me rice full of leaves. , Didn’t say anything about leaves!”

The rich man knew that he was in the wrong, so he could only endure the pain and watched helplessly as he held a large ball of rice and ate it.

The rich man really wished he could fire him immediately, but he did not dare to do so because he had promised him first, so he tried every means to make things difficult for him and force him to leave.

The next day, the rich man asked Tommy to dig up the soil and said, "Plow the land from beginning to end."

Tommy picked up the hoe and started working from one end of the field to the other. I hoed a line at the other end and sat down to rest.

A few days later, the rich man asked him: "Is my land ready for cultivation?"

"It's all ready according to your instructions!"

The rich man was very satisfied and thought to himself: "He is a good at work." Then he said to Tommy: "You go to the woods to cut some firewood and come back. If you encounter any small animals on the way, you can catch them for dinner."

"Don't worry, I will do as you ask!" After Tommy finished speaking, he went outside and killed the rich man's puppy. Then, he cut the hoe handle into two pieces, threw it into the stove, and burned the puppy.

During dinner, the rich man ate with gusto and left some bones for the puppy to eat. However, after searching for a long time, he could not find the puppy.

Tommy smiled and said: "Stop looking for it! When I went to chop wood in the morning, I happened to meet your puppy, so I caught it and killed it. What you just ate was its meat."

The rich man was furious and wanted to drive Tommy away, but in order to save his nose and ears, he had to hold back his anger.

The next day, the rich man came to the field to see how Tommy was doing. Suddenly, his eyes widened: This land had not been plowed at all!

He ran home angrily, grabbed Tommy and came to the field, pointed and said: "Didn't you say that the land has been plowed? What's going on?"

"Yes! According to your instructions, I plowed it from beginning to end. Well, isn't that the line?" Tommy asked questions slowly.

The rich man’s lungs were almost exploding with anger, and he said hoarsely: “Turn over the soil for me now! Quick!”

Tommy waved his hands and said: “No! When cooking dog meat, I burned the hoe handle as firewood. How can a hoe without a handle plow the land?"

The rich man really didn't expect that he would encounter his "nemesis" and it was too late to regret it.

One day, the rich man and his wife were going to his father-in-law's house. Because it was a long way, they decided to go on horseback and let Tommy follow behind.

After walking for a day, they came to an inn, where the rich man and his wife stayed to rest and told Tommy to feed the horses.

Tommy took the horse to a nearby village and sold it, asked the buyer for its tail, and returned to the inn.

He dug a hole in the ground outside the inn door, stuffed one end of the horse's tail into the hole, buried it with soil, leaving most of the tail outside, and then shouted: "No! Come on!"

The rich man ran out after hearing the news and saw Tommy grabbing the horse's tail and pulling it up.

"This horse went straight into the ground for some reason, and I couldn't stop it no matter what. Look, only the horse's tail is left outside now." Tommy said.

The rich man was so angry that he couldn't do anything to Tommy, so he had to walk on the road.

When they were about to arrive at the rich man’s father-in-law’s house, the rich man asked Tommy to inform him first, asking his father-in-law’s house to prepare food, wine, and beds.

Tommy came to the rich man's father-in-law's house and said: "My husband and wife will be here soon. They got a strange disease on the way. The doctor told them that they could only eat wormy noodles and sleep in the bed." On the ground."

After a while, the rich man and his wife arrived. They were exhausted and pale, as if they were seriously ill.

The father-in-law’s family hurriedly asked them to sit on the ground, served them two bowls of wormy noodles, and entertained them.

The rich man and his wife were very strange. They thought that their father-in-law's family was bankrupt, so they had to eat two bowls of wormy noodles.

Afterwards, the rich man learned that Tommy was the culprit again, and decided to drive Tommy away no matter what. So, the whole family discussed it all night.

The next day, the rich man’s wife’s uncle came forward and said to Tommy: “As long as you agree to leave voluntarily and do not cut off your master’s nose and ears, we will give you one hundred rupees.”

Tommy no longer wanted to work. He took the money, returned home, and opened a small grocery store with his brother, and they lived a pretty good life.