'This is the casket that pleases me best, mistress,' said the girl,
carrying it into the house. And the old woman smiled and nodded, and
bade her go her way. So the girl set forth, after bidding farewell to
the cows and the cats and the sparrows, who all wept as they said
good-bye.

She walked on and on and on, till she reached the flowery meadow, and
there, suddenly, something happened, she never knew what, but she was
sitting on the wall of the well in her stepmother's yard. Then she got
up and entered the house.

The woman and her daughter stared as if they had been turned into
stone; but at length the stepmother gasped out:

'So you are alive after all! Well, luck was ever against me! And
where have you been this year past?' Then the girl told how she had
taken service in the under-world, and, beside her wages, had brought
home with her a little casket, which she would like to set up in her
room.

'Give me the money, and take the ugly little box off to the outhouse,'
cried the woman, beside herself with rage, and the girl, quite
frightened at her violence, hastened away, with her precious box
clasped to her bosom.

The outhouse was in a very dirty state, as no one had been near it
since the girl had fallen down the well; but she scrubbed and swept
till everything was clean again, and then she placed the little casket
on a small shelf in the corner.