the store-room with green soap.

Next morning her mistress came bustling along first thing with butter
and a wooden ladle in a bowl, and she slipped and fell in the opening
between the stairs and the store-house door.

There she lay till Toad dragged her up.

She carried her in to her husband with such a crying and yelling that it
was heard all over the depot. Madame had been regularly worrying herself
to death with all this bustle, said she, and now the poor soul had
fallen and broken her leg.

But the one who cried the most, and didn't know what to do with himself
when he heard such weeping and wailing over his wife, was the general
dealer.

None knew the real worth of that kitchen wench, said he.

And so it was Toad who now superintended everything, and both dispensed
the stores and made provision for the household.

She drove all the hired cooks and pancake rollers out of the house--they
were only eating her master out of house and home, she said.

The _lefser_ were laid together without any sirup between them, and she
gave out fat instead of butter. She distributed it herself, and packed
it up in their _Nistebommers_[4].

Never had the general dealer known the heavy household business disposed
of so quickly as it was that year. He was quite astonished.

And he was really dumfoundered when Toad took him up into the
store-room, and showed him how little had been consumed, and how the
cured shoulders of mutton and the hams hung down from the rafters in
rows and rows.

"So long as things went on as they were going now," said he, "she should
have the control of the household like mother herself," for his wife was
now bedridden in her room upstairs.

And at Yule-tide Toad baked and roasted, and cut things down so finely
that her fellow-servants were almost driven to chew their wooden spoons
and gnaw bones.

But such fat calves, and such ribs of pork, and such _lefser_ filled
with both sirup and butter, and such _moelje_[5] and splendid fare for
the guests that came to his house at Christmas-time the general dealer
had never seen before.

Then the general dealer took her by the arm, and right down into the
shop they both went together.

She might take what she would, said he, both of kirtles and neckerchiefs
and other finery, so that she might dress and go in and out as if she
were mother herself; and she might provide herself with beads and silk
as much as she liked. There was nothing that she might