Well, the smith was very glad. “I certainly will!” he said. “Two heads are better than one.”
So the devil turned apprentice, and he lived a month with him, and soon got to know all of the smith’s work better than the master himself; and, whatever the master could not do, he instantly carried out. Oh, it was a fine sight, and the smith so grew to love him, and was so content with him—I cannot tell you how much!
One day he did not come into the smithy, and left his underling to do the work; and it was all done.
Once when the master was not at home, and only the workman was left in the smithy, he saw an old rich lady passing by. He bobbed out his head, and cried: “Hail there! There is new work to be done—old folks to be turned into young!”
Out skipped the old lady from her barouche and into the smithy. “What are you saying you can do? Is that really true? Do you mean it? Are you mad?” she asked the boy.
“No reason to start lecturing me,” the Evil Spirit answered. “If I didn’t know how I should not have summoned you.”
“What would it cost?” the rich woman asked.
“It would cost five hundred roubles.”
“Well, there is the money. Turn me into a young woman!”
The Evil Spirit took the money, and sent the coachman into the village to get two buckets of milk. And he seized the lady by the legs with the pinchers, threw her into the forge, and burned her all up. Nothing but her bones were left. When the two tubs of milk came, he emptied them into a pail, collected all the bones, and threw them into the milk. Lo and behold! in three minutes out the lady came, young—yes, alive and young, and so beautiful!