The next morning the girl said: “Now, remember, you will have to clean every skin and make it soft and white.”
So they went down to the river and started to work. The girl had said to them that at midday she would go down and see how they were getting along. They were at work nearly all the forenoon on the skins. While the elder brother shaved the hair off, the younger one scraped them thin and softened them.
When the maiden came at noon, she said: “How are you getting along?”
“We have finished four and are at work on the fifth.”
“Remember,” said she, “you must finish all of them today or I shall have to send you home.”
So they worked away until a little before the sun set, when she appeared again. They had just finished the last. The Field-mice had carefully dressed all the others (they did it better than the men), and there they lay spread out on the sands like a great field of something growing, only white.
When the maiden came down she was perfectly overcome; she looked and looked and counted and recounted. She found them all there. Then she got a long pole and fished in the water, but there were none.
Said she: “Yes, you shall be my husbands; I shall have to submit.”
She went home with them, and for a long time they all lived together, the woman with her two husbands. They managed to get along very comfortably, and the two brothers didn’t quarrel any more than they had done before.
Finally, there were born little twin boys, exactly like their fathers, who were also twins, although one was called the elder and the other the younger.