The old man took a step inside, bending under the little low door.
Still he could see n.o.body, only a great heap of rags and blankets on the sleeping-place on the top of the stove. The hut was as clean as if it had only that minute been swept by Maroosia herself. But in the middle of the floor there was a sc.r.a.p of green leaf lying, and the old man knew in a moment that it was a sc.r.a.p of green leaf from the top of a young turnip.
And while the old man looked at it, the heap of blankets and rugs on the stove moved, first in one place and then in another. Then there was a little laugh. Then another. And suddenly there was a great stir in the blankets, and they were all thrown back helter-skelter, and there were dozens and dozens of little queer children, laughing and laughing and laughing, and looking at the old man. And every child had a little turnip, and showed it to the old man and laughed.
Just then the door of the stove flew open, and out tumbled more of the little queer children, dozens and dozens of them. The more they came tumbling out into the hut, the more there seemed to be chattering in the stove and squeezing to get out one over the top of another. The noise of chattering and laughing would have made your head spin. And everyone of the children out of the stove had a little turnip like the others, and waved it about and showed it to the old man, and laughed like anything.
"Ho," says the old man, "so you are the thieves who have stolen the turnips from the top of the dovecot?"
"Yes," cried the children, and the chatter rattled as fast as hailstones on the roof. "Yes! yes! yes! _We_ stole the turnips."
"How did you get on to the top of the dovecot when the door into the house was bolted and fast?"
At that the children all burst out laughing, and did not answer a word.
"Laugh you may," said the old man; "but it is I who get the scolding when the turnips fly away in the night."
"Never mind! never mind!" cried the children. "We"ll pay for the turnips."
"How can you pay for them?" asks the old man. "You have got nothing to pay with."
All the children chattered together, and looked at the old man and smiled. Then one of them said to the old man, "Are you hungry, grandfather?"
"Hungry!" says the old man. "Why, yes, of course I am, my dear. I"ve been looking for you all day, and I had to start without my dinner."
"If you are hungry, open the cupboard behind you."
The old man opened the cupboard.
"Take out the tablecloth."
The old man took out the tablecloth.
"Spread it on the table."
The old man spread the tablecloth on the table.
"Now!" shouted the children, chattering like a thousand nests full of young birds, "we"ll all sit down and have dinner."
They pulled out the benches and gave the old man a chair at one end, and all crowded round the table ready to begin.
"But there"s no food," said the old man.
How they laughed!
"Grandfather," one of them sings out from the other end of the table, "you just tell the tablecloth to turn inside out,"
"How?" says he.
"Tell the tablecloth to turn inside out. That"s easy enough."
"There"s no harm in doing that," thinks the old man; so he says to the tablecloth as firmly as he could, "Now then you, tablecloth, turn inside out!"
The tablecloth hove itself up into the air, and rolled itself this way and that as if it were in a whirlwind, and then suddenly laid itself flat on the table again. And somehow or other it had covered itself with dishes and plates and wooden spoons with pictures on them, and bowls of soup and mushrooms and kasha, and meat and cakes and fish and ducks, and everything else you could think of, ready for the best dinner in the world.
The chattering and laughing stopped, and the old man and those dozens and dozens of little queer children set to work and ate everything on the table.
"Which of you washes the dishes?" asked the old man, when they had all done.
The children laughed.
"Tell the tablecloth to turn outside in."
"Tablecloth," says the old man, "turn outside in."
Up jumped the tablecloth with all the empty dishes and dirty plates and spoons, whirled itself this way and that in the air, and suddenly spread itself out flat again on the table, as clean and white as when it was taken out of the cupboard. There was not a dish or a bowl, or a spoon or a plate, or a knife to be seen; no, not even a crumb.
"That"s a good tablecloth," says the old man.
"See here, grandfather," shouted the children: "you take the tablecloth along with you, and say no more about those turnips."
"Well, I"m content with that," says the old man. And he folded up the tablecloth very carefully and put it away inside his shirt, and said he must be going.
"Good-bye," says he, "and thank you for the dinner and the tablecloth."
"Good-bye," say they, "and thank you for the turnips."
The old man made his way home, singing through the forest in his creaky old voice until he came near the little wooden house where he lived with the old woman. As soon as he came near there he slipped along like any mouse. And as soon as he put his head inside the door the old woman began,--
"Have you found the thieves, you old fool?"
"I found the thieves."
"Who were they?"
"They were a whole crowd of little queer children."
"Have you given them a beating they"ll remember?"
"No, I have not."
"What? Bring them to me, and I"ll teach them to steal my turnips!"
"I haven"t got them."
"What have you done with them?"
"I had dinner with them."