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.