The young girl took the cup, but no sooner had she tasted it than she put it down and turned her eyes on the potter, and said in a low voice,
“I will stay with you always, if you want me, and will be a true wife to you, and love you better than anything on earth.”
So the potter married her, and she went to live in his little cottage.
Time passed, and the potter and his young wife lived together very happily, and every day he thought her fairer and sweeter. And they had a little baby girl with blue eyes like its mother’s, and the potter thought himself the happiest man on earth, and the little brown pot stood on the shelf, and the potter looked at it, and still he would not believe about the charm, for he said to himself, “My wife loved me for my own sake, and not for any silly charm or nonsense.”
So for a time all things went well, but there came a day when the potter had to go to a neighbouring town and leave his wife at home alone all day. When he was gone she sat by the window with her little child, and presently there came up outside a dark, rough-looking man, with a wicked face, and he looked at her as she sat rocking the cradle, and thought she was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen on earth. When he looked at her the potter’s wife was frightened, but when he told her he was very hungry, and begged her for food and drink, she rose, for her heart was tender, and she fetched him bread and meat, and spread them on the table before him. So the rough man came into the cottage and sat at the table, and ate the potter’s bread and meat, and drank his wine. “And who is your husband, and where is he?” he said. “I am sure he is a lucky man to have such a wife and such a home.”
“Yes, truly,” said the potter’s wife. “We are very happy, and we love each other dearly, and we really have nothing else to wish for.”
Then the gipsy man said, “But your dress is plain, and your rooms are bare; now, were you the wife of some wealthy man, he would give you pearls and diamonds for your neck, and beautiful silks and satins.”
“No, but I don’t want them,” said the potter’s wife smiling. “My husband works very hard, and he gives me all he can, and I am quite content with it.”
“And you say he is a potter; then what sort of things does he make?” asked the gipsy man as he cast his eyes about the room, and they lit upon the little brown jug standing upon the shelf. “And did he make the little bowl there?”
“I don’t know,” said his wife, and she took it down and turned it about in her hand. “I suppose so, but he has told me it was very old.”
The gipsy man seized it eagerly, and poured wine in it, and looked inside it, and then he laughed, and stooping his head over it, said a few words, and then laughed again.
“I have seen cups like this before,” he said. “And they are worth a mint of money, though you would not think it. And have you never drunk out of it? Has it not been used?”
“I don’t drink from it,” said the potter’s wife, “but I believe I did so once, and that was on the day when I promised my husband I would be his wife.”
Then the gipsy laughed again and again. “See,” he said, “I am going a long way off, perhaps to die by cold and hunger by the roadside, while you and your husband are cosy and warm. You set small store by this cup, but it may be that in foreign countries I could sell it for what would keep me for many a long day. Give it to me, I pray you, that I may take it with me.”
The potter’s wife hesitated and trembled. She was afraid of the man, and she thought he had a hard, bad face, but she did not want to seem unkind.
“Well, take it,” she said; “but why should you want it?”
Then the gipsy man came and caught her by the arm. “Now,” he said, “you are the fairest woman I have ever seen, and I am going away, and shall never see you again. So I beg you wish me Godspeed, and drink my health out of the little brown cup you have given me. And if your lips have touched it, it will be the dearest thing I have on earth!”
Then the potter’s wife was still more frightened, and trembled more than before. But the man looked so dark and threatening, that she did not like to refuse him, and she took the cup in her hand.
“And then you will go on your way,” she said.
“And then I shall go on my way,” cried the gipsy. “And you will wait here till your husband comes, whom you love more than anything else on this earth.”
Then the potter’s wife bent her head and tasted the wine out of the cup, and wished the gipsy happiness. And when she had done so he laughed again, long and low, till her heart sank with fear, and he picked up the cup and put it into his bundle, and went his way. Then the potter’s wife sat down by the cradle, and almost cried, she knew not why, and the whole room seemed cold, and when she looked out at the sunshine it looked dark, and she bent over the baby in the cradle with her tears falling.
“Alack!” she cried, “why doesn’t my husband come home? Where is
