There was once on a time a maiden who was pretty but very lazy and
wasteful. When a little knot came in the flax she was spinning, she
at once pulled out a whole heap of it and threw it away. Her servant
gathered up the bits of flax that had been thrown away, cleaned them,
spun them, and wove them into a piece of fine linen. Out of this she made
herself a beautiful dress.
Well, the maiden was to be married. On the eve of the wedding the
servant was dancing about in the pretty dress she had made. The bride
said to the bridegroom, “How that girl jumps about dressed in my odds
and ends!” The bridegroom asked the bride what she meant. Then she told
him that the servant was wearing a dress made of the flax she had thrown
away. When the bridegroom heard that, he knew how lazy and wasteful she
was.
“The other girl is the wife for me,” said he. And he married the other
girl in the very dress she had made out of the odds and ends.
—FOLK TALE