"I haven't had dinner ..." said Goro, for want of anything brilliant to say. He felt wondrously helpless; things like this did not usually come up in the tub-making business.

"Naturally, poor thing. I'm sure you can't cook well, either," said the woman and Goro marvelled how ever she had guessed it. "Well, I can cook. I can do the work of three women. Into the house with you now, before you catch cold. Shoo!"

She drove him ahead of her into the house.

"I would say I'm quite charming," she said, closing the door behind them, "when one gets used to me. As for my name, why, 'wife', I think, will do nicely."

And sometime in the next few days still with the feeling that he was being left out of things, Goro found himself married.

The new wife..."All right, husband, I'll leave," she answered in quite an ordinary
voice, "even if it makes me unhappy. Could you do only one thing for me
before I go? Nothing much--I'd like you to make me a tub--as a kind of
souvenir. A very large one. For bathing in."

"The simplest thing in the world," said Goro, glad to get off so
easily. "I have one ready, it happens. The very one I was sitting
against when you came out of the forest. A very sound tub, one of my
best."

"It has a lid, I hope," she said.

"All of my tubs have lids," said Goro. "Well-fitting lids. Water stays
warm in _my_ tubs, even without a fire, once that lid is on. Come,
I'll show it to you."

He led her out to the tub.

"See? There's the lid, right up against it," he said, thumping the tub
with his fist. "Feel that wood! Isn't it a beauty?"

She looked into the tub and agreed that it was getting harder and
harder to find real quality in tubs. "Too bad there's that large hole
in it," she said.

"Hole?" said Goro. "Hole? A hole in one of my tubs? Impossible ...

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