Clever Gretel
A cook, two roast fowls, and the supper that never quite arrived
Page 1
In a tidy house at the edge of a little town there lived a cook named Gretel, who was clever, quick on her feet, and rather pleased with her own red-heeled shoes. One evening her master came to find her at the kitchen door and said a guest was coming to supper that very night. 'Gretel,' he said, 'prepare me two fine fowls, daintily, for we shall have company.' Gretel curtsied and said she would see to it at once, and went to fetch the two plump fowls she had ready for the pot. The evening air was cool and the lane beyond the yard was already turning blue with dusk. Gretel liked nothing better than a bit of cooking to do, and a guest to cook for, and she went inside at once, humming, to get the fire going and the spit turning.
Page 2
Inside the kitchen, Gretel built up a good fire and set the two fowls turning on the spit above it, basting them now and then so the skin would go golden and crisp. She loved this part of the work best — the smell of roasting meat, the crackle of the fat, the warm orange light on the walls. As the fowls turned, they began to brown beautifully, and before long the whole kitchen smelled so good that Gretel's stomach rumbled. She glanced at the window. It was nearly time for supper, and the guest, whoever he was, had still not arrived. 'They will be ready soon,' she told herself, turning the spit a little faster, and already thinking it would be a shame to let good fowls spoil.
Page 3
Out in the yard, the master began to grow restless. The fowls would surely be ready soon, and still there was no sign of the guest anywhere along the lane. He walked down to the garden gate and leaned over it, looking first one way and then the other, but the lane was empty in both directions — no hat, no walking stick, no sound of footsteps at all. 'Where can he have got to?' the master muttered, tapping his fingers on the gatepost. At last he decided there was nothing for it. If the guest would not come to supper, then supper would simply have to go and find the guest. He latched the gate carefully behind him and set off down the lane himself to fetch his visitor.
Page 4
With the master gone, Gretel had the whole kitchen to herself, and standing so long by the hot fire had made her very warm and very thirsty. 'A cook works hard,' she thought, 'and a hard-working cook deserves a drink.' She took a candle and went down the narrow stone steps into the cool, dim cellar, where rows of barrels stood along the wall. She filled a jug from the best barrel, lifted it, and said cheerfully to herself, 'Here's to you, Gretel,' before taking a long, satisfying drink. It tasted so good, in fact, that she decided one good turn deserved another, and had a second deep drink besides. Feeling warm and pleased with herself, she wiped her mouth, picked up her candle, and climbed back up the steps to see to her fowls.
Page 5
Back in the kitchen, Gretel took the spit off the fire to baste the fowls one more time, and the smell that rose up from them was so rich and so good that she simply had to taste a little. She touched one wing with her finger and licked it, and it was so delicious that she decided the wing itself must be burning and really ought to be eaten before it spoiled. So she cut it off and ate it at the table, enjoying every bite. Then, of course, the other wing would look very odd all alone, so she ate that one too. And once both wings were gone, well, there seemed little point leaving the rest of that fowl to go to waste either — so, with a contented sigh, Gretel sat down and ate the whole first fowl, down to the very last bone.
Page 6
Wiping her hands, Gretel went to the little kitchen window and pressed her face close to the glass, looking out into the dark lane for any sign of her master or his guest. But the lane was quiet and empty, without so much as a lantern bobbing in the distance. 'Well,' she said to herself, 'if they are not coming, who knows when they will? Perhaps they have stopped in somewhere else entirely.' The second fowl was still sitting warm on the spit, and it did seem an awful pity to let a good roast fowl go cold and stiff waiting for guests who might never arrive at all. So, with a little shrug and a last look down the empty lane, Gretel sat right down by the window and ate the second fowl too, every last bit of it, with great enjoyment.
Page 7
At last the master came hurrying back up the lane — and this time he was not alone, for he had found his guest along the way and brought him back with him, though the guest had paused a moment at the gate to straighten his hat. Eager to make a good impression, the master called ahead for Gretel to hurry and serve up supper, and then sat himself down on the stone steps outside the front door to get the big carving knife good and sharp for the fowls, drawing it carefully along a whetstone, over and over, with a steady scraping sound. He was so pleased at the thought of a fine roast supper with good company that he hardly noticed how long he sat there sharpening, humming contentedly to himself as the blade grew keener and keener in the lamplight.
Page 8
Just then there came a polite, careful knock at the front door. Gretel ran to see who it was, and found the guest standing on the step, holding his hat and smiling nervously. But instead of letting him in, Gretel leaned close and put a finger to her lips. 'Hush, hush!' she whispered urgently. 'Get away from here as fast as you can! My master did invite you to supper, it's true — but what he really means to do is cut off both your ears, just listen to him sharpening his knife for it this very moment!' The guest, hearing the steady scrape of the blade from around the corner, did not wait to ask a single question. He turned and hurried down the steps and away into the dark as fast as his legs would carry him, quite certain he had had a very narrow escape indeed.
Page 9
No sooner had the guest vanished into the dark than Gretel ran to her master, crying out that his guest had behaved shockingly — snatching both roast fowls right off the dish and running away with them! The master was horribly disappointed, for now there would be nothing at all left for his own supper, and he called after the fleeing guest to stop, knife still in his hand from the carving he never got to do. When the guest did not stop, the master set off running down the lane after him, waving and calling out, 'Just one! Just one!' — meaning only that the guest should leave him at least one fowl of the two. But the guest, remembering only Gretel's warning about his ears, heard it quite differently, and ran faster than he had ever run before, until he was far out of sight down the moonlit road.
Page 10
At last the master gave up the chase, out of breath and quite unable to catch the guest, who had vanished entirely into the night still clutching his hat in one hand. Tired and disappointed, he trudged slowly back up the dark lane toward home, wondering how on earth he was going to explain an empty table to anyone. When he came through the yard and in at the kitchen door, there sat Gretel, perfectly calm and perfectly content, with not a single fowl anywhere in sight and not the faintest flicker of guilt on her face. She had, after all, nothing else to do that evening — so she simply made herself comfortable, and left her master to wonder, all on his own, exactly what had become of his supper.
About this story
- Audience: kids (ages 6–12)
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