She would not be satisfied with this answer , and urged him more and more to tell her why he had laughed . But he controlled himself and said : ` Let me be , wife ; what ails you ? I do not know myself why I laughed . ' But the more he put her off , the more she tormented him to tell her the cause of his laughter . At length he said to her : ` Know , then , that if I tell it you I shall immediately and surely die . ' But even this did not quiet her ; she only besought him the more to tell her . Meanwhile they had reached home , and before getting down from his horse the man called for a coffin to be brought ; and when it was there he placed it in front of the house , and said to his wife : ` See , I will lay myself down in this coffin , and will then tell you why I laughed , for as soon as I have told you I shall surely die . ' So he lay down in the coffin , and while he took a last look around him , his old dog came out from the farm and sat down by him , and whined . When the master saw this , he called to his wife : ` Bring a piece of bread to give to the dog . ' The wife brought some bread and threw it to the dog , but he would not look at it . Then the farm cock came and pecked at the bread ; but the dog said to it : ` Wretched glutton , you can eat like that when you see that your master is dying ? ' The cock answered : ` Let him die , if he is so stupid . I have a hundred wives , which I call together when I find a grain of corn , and as soon as they are there I swallow it myself ; should one of them dare to be angry , I would give her a lesson with my beak . He has only one wife , and he can not keep her in order . ' As soon as the man understood this , he got up out of the coffin , seized a stick , and called his wife into the room , saying : ` Come , and I will tell you what you so much want to know ' ; and then he began to beat her with the stick , saying with each blow : ` It is that , wife , it is that ! ' And in this way he taught her never again to ask why he had laughed . The Boy Who Could Keep A Secret Once upon a time there lived a poor widow who had one little boy . At first sight you would not have thought that he was different from a thousand other little boys ; but then you noticed that by his side hung the scabbard of a sword , and as the boy grew bigger the scabbard grew bigger too . The sword which belonged to the scabbard was found by the little boy sticking out of the ground in the garden , and every day he pulled it up to see if it would go into the scabbard . But though it was plainly becoming longer and longer , it was some time before the two would fit .
However , there came a day at last when it slipped XXXXX quite easily .
around as at for if in though upon while with