“If out of the tower you want to go,
You will spin one hundred skeins you know!”
Then he looked very cunning indeed, and he opened the door to his storeroom. “There are one thousand bundles of flax,” said he. “You must spin all of this.”
Then he said,
“How soon do you really want to go,
In about a hundred years or so?”
The princess laughed gaily and said,
“At sundown if you care to call,
Perhaps you’ll find I’ve spun it all!”
The little dwarf was so surprised at this answer that he looked cross-eyed, but he did not answer the princess.