“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 road-side, 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 God-speed, 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,