When the soup was ready, she called out to her father to come to dinner. No reply came from him, "but there was a human head in the forest, and it replied, 'I'm coming immediately!' And when the Head arrived, it cried, 'Maiden, open the door!' She opened it. 'Maiden, Maiden! lift me over the threshold!' She lifted it over. 'Maiden, Maiden! put the dinner on the table!' She did so, and she and the Head sat down to dinner. When they had dined, 'Maiden, Maiden!' said the Head, 'take me off the bench!' She took it off the bench, and cleared the table. It lay down to sleep on the bare floor; she lay on the bench. She fell asleep, but it went into the forest after its servants. The house became bigger; servants, horses, everything one could think of suddenly appeared. The servants came to the maiden, and said, 'Get up! it's time to go for a drive!' So she got into a carriage with the Head, but she took a cock along with her. She told the cock to crow; it crowed. Again she told it to crow; it crowed again. And a third time she told it to crow. When it had crowed for the third time, the Head fell to pieces, and became a heap of golden coins."[289] Then the stepmother sent her own daughter into the forest. Everything occurred as before, until the Head arrived. Then she was so frightened that she tried to hide herself, and she would do nothing for the Head, which had to dish up its own dinner, and eat it by itself. And so "when she lay down to sleep, it ate her up." In a story in Chudinsky's collection, the stepdaughter is sent by night to watch the rye in an _ovin_,[290] or corn-kiln. Presently a stranger appears and asks her to marry him. She replies that she has no wedding-clothes, upon which he brings her everything she asks for. But she is very careful not to ask for more than one thing at a time, and so the cock crows before her list of indispensable necessaries is exhausted. The stranger immediately disappears, and she carries off her presents in triumph. The next night her stepsister is sent to the _ovin_, and the stranger appears as before, and asks her to marry him. She, also, replies that she has no wedding-clothes, and he offers to supply her with what she wants. Whereupon, instead of asking for a number of things one after the other, she demands them all at once--"Stockings, garters, a petticoat, a dress, a comb, earrings, a mirror, soap, white paint and rouge, and everything which her stepsister had got." Then follows the catastrophe. The stranger brought her everything, all at once. "Now then," says he, "will you marry me now?" "Wait a bit," said the stepmother's daughter, "I'll wash and dress, and whiten myself and rouge myself, and then I'll marry you." And straightway she set to work washing and dressing--and she hastened and hurried to get all that done--she wanted so awfully to see herself decked out as a bride. By-and-by she was quite dressed--but the cock had not yet crowed.