The frog, for some considerable period, watched her from the side, but finally hopped away into the hut. At noonday it appeared again, and summoned her to dinner, which was already prepared in the little living-room.
“Who prepared my dinner?” asked Rosalie, after she had washed her hands and settled to the meal.
“I did,” it replied. “It’s a woman’s work certainly, but if you waited for a woman to do it for you, you’d come badly off. No; I’m a frog, but when there’s no one else by I can do other work besides my own. How do you like digging?”
“It makes me very tired, and the inside of my hands are quite sore.”
“Are they? Well, you’ve got to go on again this afternoon, you know. If you don’t get the seeds in before very long they’ll wither.”
She answered nothing, but after the customary hour of rest returned again to the hard labour.
It was slow work and very hard, and not a soul came near all the day long. In fact, during the afternoon even the frog seemed to have deserted her, and it was not till the first faint tinge of evening crossed the sky that she again heard the familiar voice calling from the wooden doorstep:
“Time’s up now; tea’s ready.”
Rosalie let the fork drop on the ground, and turned round as eagerly as her tired body would allow.
Whilst she ate her tea, this new friend sat upon the hearth.