"If you disobey me," Golden Antlers said, "something awful may happen."
"I won't open the door," Smolicheck always promised. "I won't open it until you come home."
Now one day there was a knock on the door.
"Oh!" Smolicheck thought to himself, "I wonder who that is!" and he called out:
"Who's there?"
From the outside sweet voices answered:
"Smolicheck, Smolicheck, please open the door
Just a wee little crack of two fingers—no more!
We'll reach in our cold little hands to get warm
Then leave without doing you the least bit of harm!
So open, Smolicheck, please open the door!"
But Smolicheck didn't think he ought to open the door because he remembered what Golden Antlers had told him. Golden Antlers was very kind but he spanked Smolicheck when Smolicheck was disobedient. And Smolicheck didn't want to get a spanking. So he put his hands over his ears to shut out the sound of the sweet voices and that time he didn't open the door.
"You're a good boy," Golden Antlers said in the evening when he came home. "Those must have been the wicked little wood maidens. If you had opened the door they would have carried you off to their cave and then what would you have done!"