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He did the work of two men but whether he was working or resting you could always hear him cracking his merry jokes and laughing his jolly laugh. "I think he's foolish!" Mihailo said. Jakov hoped that the village people wouldn't hear about his carryings on. "They'd laugh at him," he said, "and they'd laugh at us, too, because we're his brothers." But Stefan didn't care.
"Jakov will make a fine peddler," the farmer said. "He's industrious and sharp and some day he will probably be a rich man." But Stefan, the farmer's youngest son, had no special talent and because he didn't spend all his time with his nose in a book and because he never made the best of a bargain his brothers scorned him.
"When I went there the day before yesterday I began telling her a funny story out of my Latin book but instead of laughing she said: 'Oh, send him away! So now she'll have to starve to death for all of me!" "Me, too!" said Jakov, the second son.
And Jakov said: "If the village people could see the pigs following him about, how they'd laugh at him! I hope when I go to the village to live he won't be visiting me all the time!" Another thing the older brothers couldn't understand about Stefan was why he was always laughing and joking.
Presently the people of the kingdom, following the example of their rulers, were laughing, too, and cracking jokes and, strange to say, they soon found they were working all the better for their jollity. Laughter grew so fashionable that even Mihailo and Jakov were forced to take it up. They didn't do it very well but they practised at it conscientiously.
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