"Thank you," said the grasshopper. "You're very kind." He hopped
up to the top of the signboard, and through the night he stood for beer and ale with the golden cockerel.
In the morning the publican came to open the public house and he saw the grasshopper on the signboard. "That's no brewery that I ever heard of," said the publican. He got a ladder, climbed up, put the grasshopper under his arm, climbed down, and went to the antique shop down the street. There he sold the golden grasshopper to the antique dealer.
The grasshopper found himself leaning against a broken chair next to a dented copper galloping horse who was standing on two crossed iron bars. Each bar had an iron letter on each end of it. The letters were N, S, E, and W.
"What do you stand for?" said the grasshopper.
" Weather " said the horse.
"There isn't any weather in this place," " Then I don't suppose I stand for anything," said the horse.
"On the contrary," said the grasshoper, "I think you do stand for anything." He had nothing more to say to the horse, and when midnight came he gathered himself together for a strong hop. Then he went out through the antique-shop window, leaving broken glass behind him and the burglar alarm ringing.
The grasshopper hopped down one street, then another, then another. He came to a neat-looking van, painted yellow. In the windows of the van the grasshopper saw toys. There were wooden toys and plush toys and clockwork tin toys. There were dolls and teddy bears, drums and wagons, tin crocodiles and monkeys who played the fiddle when wound up. The grasshopper hopped on to the roof of the van and settled down for the night.
In the morning a man came out of the house in front of which the van was parked. The man had once been a clerk at the bank over whose door the grasshopper had hung. He had saved his money for years in order to buy and stock the toy van, and it was his plan to drive from 4_ town to town selling toys for children.
When the man saw the grasshopper on top of his van he laughed and said, "Who would have thought it." Then he got a can of red paint and a brush and lettered carefully on both sides of the van: THE GOLDEN GRASSHOPPER.
When the paint was dry he started his travels from town to town, selling toys. And the grasshopper rode on the roof of the van on a new iron bracket made especially for him. Whenever the children saw him coming they ran to see what new toys THE GOLDEN GRASSHOPPER had brought.
Often the birds he met in various towns stopped to talk to the grasshopper, and he told them, " There are things I simply won't stand for, you see. But I like this sort of work very much."
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