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Updated: May 10, 2025
Scrub and Spare would have left the village but for their barley field, their cabbage garden, and a maid called Fairfeather, whom both the cobblers had courted for seven years without even knowing whom she meant to favour. Sometimes Fairfeather seemed to favour Scrub, sometimes she smiled on Spare; but the brothers were always friends and did not quarrel.
In looking at the leaves, and talking of what they were going to do when they came to the Court, Scrub and Fairfeather did not see that a very thin old woman had slipped from behind a tree, with a long staff in her hand and a great bag by her side.
"I come from the Court for a day's hunting, and have lost my way in the forest." "Sit down and have a share of our supper," said Fairfeather, "I will put some more eggs in the ashes; and tell me the news of Court I used to think of it long ago when I was young and foolish." "Did you never go there?" said the cobbler. "So fair a dame as you would make the ladies wonder."
So things went on, till news of his brother's good fortune reached Scrub in the moorland cottage on another first of April, when the cuckoo came with two golden leaves because he had none to carry for Spare. "Think of that!" said Fairfeather. "Here we are spending our lives in this humdrum place, and Spare making his fortune at the Court with two or three paltry green leaves!
Every first of April the cuckoo came tapping at their doors with the golden leaf to Scrub and the green to Spare. Fairfeather would have treated him nobly with wheaten bread and honey, for she had some notion of trying to make him bring two gold leaves instead of one.
There he mended shoes so as to please everyone, had a scarlet coat for holidays, and a fat goose for dinner every wedding-day. Fairfeather, too, had a crimson gown and fine blue ribbons. But neither she nor Scrub were content, for to buy all these grand things the golden leaf had to be broken and parted with piece by piece, so the last morsel was gone before the cuckoo came with another.
Scrub and Fairfeather sat leaning against the old tree. The cobbler had a lump of cheese in his hand; his wife held fast a hunch of bread. Their eyes and mouths were both open, but they were dreaming of the fine things at the Court, when the old woman raised her shrill voice: "What ho, my sons! come here, and carry home the harvest."
They sowed their barley, planted their cabbage, and, now that their trade was gone, worked in the fields of some of the rich villagers to make out a scanty living. So the seasons came and passed. Spring, summer, harvest, and winter followed each other as they have always done. At the end of the winter Scrub and Spare had grown so poor and ragged that Fairfeather thought them beneath her notice.
Scrub and Fairfeather were now sure, after this speech, that there must be about them something of the look that noble persons have.
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