Atondido Stories
“A m an am I
Six inches high,
But a long, long beard
Hangs from my chin.
Open the door
And let me in!”
Then Dorla was very frightened and she hid in the corner.
Long Beard broke open the door and he caught Dorla and he
shook her out of her skin. It served her right, too, for she was a
wicked, spiteful girl and she had never been kind to anybody in
her life.
Long Beard left her bones in a heap on the floor, and he hung
her skin on the nail at the back of the door. Then he put her grin-
ning skull in the window.
On the third day Dorla’s mother gave her husband a brand
new table-cloth and said:
“Go now and see how my Dorla is getting on. Here is a table-
cloth for the ducats.”
So the man took the table-cloth and went to the mountains.
As he came near the hut, he saw something in the window that
looked like grinning teeth. He said to himself:
“Dorla must be very happy to be smiling at me from this dis-
tance.”
But when he reached the hut all he found of Dorla was a
heap of bones on the floor, the skin hanging on the nail behind
the door, and the skull grinning in the window.
Without a word he gathered the bones into the table-cloth
and started back.
As he neared home the old dog said:
“Bow-wow, mistress, here comes the master and it’s rattle-
rattle before him and rattle-rattle behind him.”
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