Every day at dinner, after the table had been cleared, a trusty servant had to bring in one other dish. But it was covered up, and the servant himself did not know what was in it.
It was not long before some one knocked at the house-door and cried, ‘Open the door, dear children; your mother is here, and has brought something back with her for each of you.’
Early in the morning she had to get up to milk the cow, clean and polish everything in the house, and prepare breakfast for her father.
The giant took up little Thumbling carefully with two fingers, examined him, and without saying one word went away with him.
‘Vaccarella! Vaccarella! what shall I do? I have got all this hemp to spin, and I never learnt spinning. Yet if I don’t get through it somehow I shall get sadly beaten to-night. Dear little cow, tell me what to do!’
The little doll's eyes would begin to shine like glow-worms, and it would become alive. It would eat a little food, and sip a little drink, and then it would comfort Wassilissa and tell her how to act.
‘I once heard the old people say that behind the village, near the dark forest, there is buried a treasure, yes, a great treasure, but it is buried under a large, heavy stone, too heavy a stone for one man to move.’