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Main > Fairy tale > All authors > Andersen Hans Christian > Fairy tale "The Gardener and the Noble Family"

The Gardener and the Noble Family

" said the noble family.

Now every day great dishes filled with wonderful apples and pears from their own garden were set on the table. Bushels and barrels of these fruits were sent to friends in the city and outside the city; yes, even to foreign lands. This afforded great pleasure; yet the family added that the last two summers had, of course, been remarkably good for tree fruits and these had done very well all over the country.

Some time passed. The family were dinner guests at court. The next day they sent for the gardener. At the royal table they had eaten melons, very juicy and wonderfully flavored, from their majesties' greenhouse.

"You must go to the court gardener, my good Larsen, and let him give you some seeds of those precious melons."

"But the court gardener got his melon seeds from us!" said the gardener, very pleased.

"Then that man knows how to bring the fruit to a higher perfection!" answered the family. "Each melon was splendid."

"Well, then, I really can feel proud!" said the gardener. "I must tell your lordship that the court gardener had had bad luck with his melons this year, and when he saw how beautiful ours looked, and then tasted them, he ordered three of them for the castle."

"Larsen, don't try to tell us that those were melons from our garden."

"I really believe so," said the gardener.

And he went to the court gardener, from whom he got a written guarantee to the effect that the melons on the royal table were from the manor. This was really a big surprise to the family, and they did not keep the story to themselves; the written guarantee was displayed, and melon seeds were sent far and wide, as grafting slips had been earlier.

These slips, the family learned, had taken and begun to bear fruit of an excellent kind. This was named after the family manor, and the name became known in English, German, and French. This, no one had expected. "Let's hope the gardener won't get big ideas about himself," said the family.

But he took it in a different way; he would strive now to be known as one of the best gardeners in the country and to produce something superior out of all sorts of garden stuff every year.

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