"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 was an excellent cook and indeed did the work of three ordinary women. Dinner was never late, and the house was generally spotless. She spoke neither too much nor too little. On evenings when Goro came home discouraged, she always had some good remark ready about the tub-making business--how much artistry and labor went into a good bucket, how unreasonably little money went to the hard-working artist--cheering things, flattering things. Goro gained weight and was not unhappy. At mealtimes his wife ate a little more than a bird but not quite so much as a large cat. The food bills went up and up. Goro gradually discovered that with the little eating going on, he was using up food at a rate to feed six or seven coopers together with a few aunts and uncles. "Curious ...," he muttered, "... very," and determined to investigate. One morning he made a great fuss about getting measuring equipment together. He told his wife that he was going to a village half a day's walk away, to take measurements for the village head-man's new tub. Then he went a short distance into the forest and waited behind a tree. When he saw his wife go to a nearby meadow to gather mushrooms, he flitted around to the back of the house. Hiding his tools behind the rear door, he crept inside. He shinnied up the center pole and flattened out against one of the big ceiling beams. And waited. His wife came back and put on the fire the largest pot in the house. From the storage bins she took about five pounds of rice and fell to washing it. She ladled out enough bean paste to nearly fill another big pot, and made bean soup. "Who," wondered Goro on his beam, "is she expecting, and how many of them?" He blinked, blinked again--his eyes rather rolled up. She had slid the kitchen door out of its frame and was using it for a dumpling factory, lining the dumplings up--lines and lines of rice dumplings like fat well-paid soldiers. Then she stretched and peered about as if to make sure she had not forgotten something. Satisfied that she had not, she parted her hair and exposed the mouth in the center of her head. Goro made a circle of his thumbs and forefingers, trying to calculate the size of the thing and nearly fell off his perch. It was fairly large. Into this crater, his wife pushed dumplings by ones and twos and they disappeared. To make certain, she washed them down with all the bean soup, ladles of bean soup. When she had disposed of everything she waited a moment, expectantly. A cheery, satisfied rumble came from the top of her head. "Burps, too," thought Goro. "A regular volcano. Wonder if there'll be smoke." He was too interested to be frightened.