Early in the morning the old woman woke the old man and told him to go up to the dovecot and see how those turnips were getting on.

He got up and rubbed his eyes.  When he saw the tablecloth on the table, the wish came to him to have a bite of food to begin the day with.  So he stopped in the middle of putting on his shirt, and called to the tablecloth, “Tablecloth, turn inside out!”

Nothing happened.  Why should anything happen?  It was not the same tablecloth.

The old man told the old woman.  “You should have made a good feast yesterday,” says he, “for the tablecloth is no good any more.  That is, it’s no good that way; it’s like any ordinary tablecloth.”

“Most tablecloths are,” says the old woman.  “But what are you dawdling about?  Up you go and have a look at those turnips.”

The old man went climbing up the narrow twisting stairs.  He held on with both hands for fear of falling, because they were so steep.  He climbed to the top of the house, to the top of the tower, to the top of the dovecot, and looked at the turnips.  He looked at the turnips, and he counted the turnips, and then he came slowly down the stairs again wondering what the old woman would say to him.

“Well,” says the old woman in her sharp voice, “are they doing nicely?  Because if not, I know whose fault it is.”

“They are doing finely,” said the old man; “but some of them have gone.  Indeed, quite a lot of them have been stolen away.”

“Stolen away!” screamed the old woman.  “How dare you stand there and tell me that?  Didn’t you find the thieves yesterday?  Go and find those children again, and take a stick with you, and don’t show yourself here till you can tell me that they won’t steal again in a hurry.”

“Let me have a bite to eat,” begs the old man.  “It’s a long way to go on an empty stomach.”

“Not a mouthful!” yells the old woman.  “Off with you.  Letting my turnips be stolen every night, and then talking to me about bites of food!”

So the old man went off again without his dinner, and hobbled away into the forest as quickly as he could to get out of earshot of the old woman’s scolding tongue.

As soon as he was out of sight the old woman stopped screaming after him, and went into the house and opened the iron chest and took out the tablecloth the children had given the old man, and laid it on the table instead of her own.  She told it to turn inside out, and up it flew and whirled about and flopped down flat again, all covered with good things.  She ate as much as she could hold.  Then she told the tablecloth to turn outside in, and folded it up and hid it away again in the iron chest.

Meanwhile the old man tightened his belt, because he was so hungry.  He hobbled along through the green forest till he came to the little hut standing under the pine trees.  There was no smoke coming from the chimney, but there was such a chattering you would have thought that all the Vanyas and Maroosias in Holy Russia were talking to each other inside.