“Yes. Then we went and dug up the treasure and put it in two sacks and you could have seen us yourself carrying it home on our backs but you were too busy beating poor Helmi.”
“I beating poor Helmi! Ho! Ho! Ho! That is a good one! I was busy beating my wife while you were getting birds out of fishnets and fish out of snares! Ho! Ho! Ho!”
“It’s so!” Susanna cried. “It is so! You were so beating Helmi! And you sounded just like two dogs fighting! And we did so carry home the treasure!”
But Helmi’s husband only laughed the harder. That afternoon when he went to the Inn he was still laughing and when the men there asked him what was so funny he told them Susanna’s story and soon the whole village was laughing at the foolish woman who found birds in fishnets and fish in snares and who thought that two yelping dogs were Helmi and her husband fighting.
As for the treasure that wasn’t taken any more seriously than the grouse and the pike.
“It must have been two sacks of turnips they carried home on their backs!” the village people decided.
The husband of course said nothing and Susanna, too, was soon forced to keep quiet for now whenever she tried to explain people only laughed.
MIKKO, THE FOX
