The Fifth Box
Nothing from the first box was in the last one, and the last one closed.
A peddler gave the old tinsmith's grandson a tin, flat and the size of a palm, because the boy had looked at it so long. The tinsmith said they would make a music box to fit inside it.
The first box held a comb of brass teeth taken from a broken toy. It rattled, and the lid would not close. The second box was better, and the lid would not close. On the third, the lid sat nearly shut, like a mouth holding a word.
Each evening the old man laid the new parts beside the old and swept the old into the scrap bin. The boy asked why they could not keep the good comb. The old man said the comb had been made for a larger room.
On the fourth box the lid closed, with some pushing. The next morning two of the wires had snapped. The boy wanted to twist the ends together, and the old man let him. It hummed for an hour and then went silent.
They bought finer wire from the wire-drawer in the next village. The boy did the joining himself, holding the hot iron in both hands. He set one wire to the wrong peg.
The old man saw it. He sat on his stool and drank his tea and said nothing. The boy turned the crank and heard a wrong note. He frowned, and then he found the fault alone.
The fifth box closed with a click. Nothing inside it had been in the first: not the comb, not the pegs, not the wire. Only the tin was the same.
In one corner, in a twist of cloth, lay the two sweets the peddler had left in the tin. They had never eaten them. That was where the joke began.