In one village there lived an old man who was so stingy and tight-fisted! How he sat down at the table, cut bread, sat and looked at his daughter-in-law: first at one, then at the other, but he himself did not eat anything. Now, looking at him, the daughters-in-law will also stare, and they will crawl out from the table hungry. And afterward, as soon as they left for work, the old man secretly ate himself, got drunk, and lay down on the stove, well-fed.
Then one day the younger daughter-in-law asked for time off and went to her father, to her mother and began to complain about her father-in-law:
- So fierce, hateful! You can't live! He won’t let you eat at all, he keeps swearing: you’re so hungry!
“Okay,” her father says to her, “I’ll come to visit you and see your rules myself.”
And a day later he came to the old man in the evening:
- Great, matchmaker!
- Great!
- I’m visiting you; am I happy?
- I’m not happy, there’s nothing to do; sit down, and you will be a guest.
- How is my daughter living, is she chewing bread well?
- Nothing, he lives for himself!
- Come on, matchmaker, you don’t feed the nightingale with fables; Let's have dinner, it will be easier to talk.
We sat down at the table; The old man cut bread, did not eat himself - he sat, still looking at his daughter-in-law.
- Eh, matchmaker! - said the guest. “It’s not our way: with us, he sliced some bread and ate it, then he sliced it some more and then he ate it.” Well, you young women, eat more bread, you will be healthier!
After dinner they began to go to bed.
- You, matchmaker, where will you lie down? - asked the owner.
- I’ll lie down on the kutnik.
- What you! “I always sleep here,” said the old man.
He had eggs, bread and milk hidden in his kut; at night, when he falls asleep in the hut, he stealthily gets up and eats his fill. The matchmaker noticed this matter.
“As you wish,” he said, “and I’ll lie down on the kutnik.”
Everyone went to bed. At midnight the old man crawled, and right into the store - he creaked! And the guest had stored up a large belt whip for him since the evening; how he pulled out the matchmaker once, twice, three times - he beat him and said:
- Shoot, you damned one, scatter!
The old man had to sleep hungry. This is how the matchmaker stayed with the matchmaker for three whole days and made himself remembered for a long time.
The old man conducted it, and from then on, he stopped counting pieces in his daughters-in-law’s mouths.
Translated from Russian · original on wisdomlib.ru