Once upon a time there was a poor widow who lived in a little cottage
with her only son Jack.
Jack was a giddy, thoughtless boy, but very kind-hearted and
affectionate. There had been a hard winter, and after it the poor woman
had suffered from fever and ague. Jack did no work as yet, and by
degrees they grew dreadfully poor. The widow saw that there was no
means of keeping Jack and herself from starvation but by selling her
cow; so one morning she said to her son, ‘I am too weak to go myself,
Jack, so you must take the cow to market for me, and sell her.’
Jack liked going to market to sell the cow very much; but as he was on
the way, he met a butcher who had some beautiful beans in his hand.
Jack stopped to look at them, and the butcher told the boy that they
were of great value, and persuaded the silly lad to sell the cow for
these beans.
When he brought them home to his mother instead of the money she
expected for her nice cow, she was very vexed and shed many tears,
scolding Jack for his folly. He was very sorry, and mother and son went
to bed very sadly that night; their last hope seemed gone.
At daybreak Jack rose and went out into the garden.
‘At least,’ he thought, ‘I will sow the wonderful beans. Mother says
that they are just common scarlet-runners, and nothing else; but I may
as well sow them.’
So he took a piece of stick, and made some holes in the ground, and put
in the beans.
That day they had very little dinner, and went sadly to bed, knowing
that for the next day there would be none and Jack, unable to sleep
from grief and vexation, got up at day-dawn and went out into the
garden.
What was his amazement to find that the beans had grown up in the
night, and climbed up and up till they covered the high cliff that
sheltered the cottage, and disappeared above it! The stalks had twined
and twisted themselves together till they formed quite a ladder.
‘It would be easy to climb it,’ thought Jack.
And, having thought of the experiment, he at once resolved to carry it
out, for Jack was a good climber. However, after his late mistake about
the cow, he thought he had better consult his mother first.