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.”
“I pray you drink one draught, in remembrance of the happy days we have had together.”
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.”