When the fisherman went home to his wife in the ditch, he told her how he had caught a great fish, and how it had told him it was an enchanted prince, and that on hearing it speak he had let it go again.
"Did you not ask it for anything?" said the wife.
"No," said the man, "what should I ask for?"
"Ah!" said the wife, "we live very wretchedly here in this nasty stinking ditch. Do go back, and tell the fish we want a little cottage."
The fisherman did not much like the business; however he went to the sea, and when he came there the water looked all yellow and green. And he stood at the water's edge, and said,
"O man of the sea!
Come listen to me,
For Alice my wife,
The plague of my life,
Hath sent me to beg a boon of thee!"
Then the fish came swimming to him, and said, "Well, what does she want?"
"Ah!" answered the fisherman, "my wife says that when I had caught you, I ought to have asked you for something before I let you go again. She does not like living any longer in the ditch, and wants a little cottage."
"Go home, then," said the fish. "She is in the cottage already."
So the man went home and saw his wife standing at the door of a cottage. "Come in, come in," said she; "is not this much better than the ditch?" And there was a parlor, and a bed-chamber, and a kitchen; and behind the cottage there was a little garden with all sorts of flowers and fruits, and a court-yard full of ducks and chickens.