“I want you to take some more things to my mother. I shall get everything ready to-night. Don’t wake me in the morning before you go, as I shall come to bed very late. I have to make the bread.”
The man went off to bed, and the girl set to work. She made a great doll of dough and put it in her bed; then she put clothes and money into the chest, crept in herself, and pulled down the lid.
The next morning the man got up early. “Wife, wife,” he shouted, “good-bye!”
No answer. “Ah, I forgot, she was up late making bread. She’s a dear little wife, and works very hard.”
So he crept on tiptoe to her bedside, saw the figure under the clothes, and went out as quietly as he had gone in.
Then he took the chest and started. Again he wanted to set down his burden, again the warning voice stopped him, and at last he flung down the box at his mother-in-law’s door, declaring that this was the last he would bring her.
When he got home he called, “Wife! wife!”
Still no answer. “What, is she still asleep? She must be tired”; and he went to shake her. Then he found that there was no wife there, but only a figure of dough, and that he was alone once more in his underground palace.