(A) Once upon a time there lived a poor but cheerful shoemaker. He was so happy, he sang all day long. The children loved to stand around his window to listen to (a) him. Next door to the shoemaker lived a rich man. He used to sit up all night to count his gold. In the morning, he went to bed, but he could not sleep because of the sound of the shoemaker’s singing.
(B) He could not sleep, or work, or sing ― and, worst of all, the children no longer came to see (b) him. At last, the shoemaker felt so unhappy that he seized his bag of gold and ran next door to the rich man. “Please take back your gold,” he said. “The worry of it is making me ill, and I have lost all of my friends. I would rather be a poor shoemaker, as I was before.” And so the shoemaker was happy again and sang all day at his work.
(C) There was so much there that the shoemaker was afraid to let it out of his sight. So he took it to bed with him. But he could not sleep for worrying about it. Very early in the morning, he got up and brought his gold down from the bedroom. He had decided to hide it up the chimney instead. But he was still uneasy, and in a little while he dug a hole in the garden and buried his bag of gold in it. It was no use trying to work. (c) He was too worried about the safety of his gold. And as for singing, he was too miserable to utter a note.
(D) One day, (d) he thought of a way of stopping the singing. He wrote a letter to the shoemaker asking him to visit. The shoemaker came at once, and to his surprise the rich man gave him a bag of gold. When he got home again, the shoemaker opened the bag. (e) He had never seen so much gold before! When he sat down at his bench and began, carefully, to count it, the children watched through the window.