FullReads

“Well,” says the old woman in her sharp voice, “are they doing nicely? Because if not, I know whose fault it is.”

“They are doing finely,” said the old man; “but some of them have gone. Indeed, quite a lot of them have been stolen away.”

“Stolen away!” screamed the old woman. “How dare you stand there and tell me that? Didn’t you find the thieves yesterday? Go and find those children again, and take a stick with you, and don’t show yourself here till you can tell me that they won’t steal again in a hurry.”

“Let me have a bite to eat,” begs the old man. “It’s a long way to go on an empty stomach.”

“Not a mouthful!” yells the old woman. “Off with you. Letting my turnips be stolen every night, and then talking to me about bites of food!”

So the old man went off again without his dinner, and hobbled away into the forest as quickly as he could to get out of earshot of the old woman’s scolding tongue.

As soon as he was out of sight the old woman stopped screaming after him, and went into the house and opened the iron chest and took out the tablecloth the children had given the old man, and laid it on the table instead of her own. She told it to turn inside out, and up it flew and whirled about and flopped down flat again, all covered with good things. She ate as much as she could hold. Then she told the tablecloth to turn outside in, and folded it up and hid it away again in the iron chest.

Meanwhile the old man tightened his belt, because he was so hungry. He hobbled along through the green forest till he came to the little hut standing under the pine trees. There was no smoke coming from the chimney, but there was such a chattering you would have thought that all the Vanyas and Maroosias in Holy Russia were talking to each other inside.

He had no sooner come in sight of the hut than the dozens and dozens of little queer children came pouring out of the door to meet him. And every single one of them had a turnip, and showed it to the old man, and laughed and laughed as if it were the best joke in the world.

“I knew it was you,” said the old man.

“Of course it was us,” cried the children. “We stole the turnips.”

“But how did you get to the top of the dovecot when the door into the house was bolted and fast?”

The children laughed and laughed and did not answer a word.

“Laugh you may,” says the old man; “but it is I who get the scolding when the turnips fly away in the night.”

“Never mind! never mind!” cried the children. “We’ll pay for the turnips.”

“All very well,” says the old man; “but that tablecloth of yours–it was fine yesterday, but this morning it would not give me even a glass of tea and a hunk of black bread.”

At that the faces of the little queer children were troubled and grave. For a moment or two they all chattered together, and took no notice of the old man. Then one of them said,–

“Well, this time we’ll give you something better. We’ll give you a goat.”

“A goat?” says the old man.

“A goat with a cold in its head,” said the children; and they crowded round him and took him behind the hut where there was a gray goat with a long beard cropping the short grass.

“It’s a good enough goat,” says the old man; “I don’t see anything wrong with him.”

“It’s better than that,” cried the children. “You tell it to sneeze.”

The old man thought the children might be laughing at him, but he did not care, and he remembered the tablecloth. So he took off his hat and bowed to the goat. “Sneeze, goat,” says he.