“There is only one way that I shall ever go,” said the gipsy, and she looked into the fire with her big black eyes, “and that is the road which leads to the churchyard. But if he was your husband, why do you say that you are glad he is away? Is he not kind to you?”
“He was very kind to me,” said the potter’s wife, “he gave me everything I wanted, and money and to spare, but for all that I could not love him, and I am glad he has gone, and left me alone with my baby girl.”
“You are a foolish woman,” said the gipsy. “If you had a husband who loved you and worked for you well, you should have loved him and cherished him. My husband beat me, and was cruel to me, and stole all I had. And now that I am dying, he has deserted me to die as I may.”
Then the potter’s wife brought her food and bid her lie down, and dried her rags of clothes, and she wrapped the little boy in her own clothes, and gave him food and put him to sleep; and as she lay, the gipsy woman watched her with her great black eyes, and at last she said, “Have you a brown cup here, a little rough brown cup? did your husband give it to you?”
The potter’s wife stared with astonishment. “How did you know I had a little rough brown cup?” she said. “There was such a one, and it stood upon the shelf, but I have given it away. I gave it to a poor gipsy man who begged it of me; he wanted it so badly that I couldn’t refuse, and he made me drink his health in it ere he took it away.”
Then the gipsy woman raised her head, and her eyes looked blacker and her cheeks blacker.
“And what was the gipsy man like?” she cried. “Had you drunk from the cup before? Can you remember?”
“I remember well,” said the woman. “I drank from it on the day when I promised I would marry my husband, and I drank from it once again when I wished the gipsy God-speed, and soon after that, my husband left me, for I could not bear to have him near me.”
Then the gipsy cried out aloud, and said something in a language which the woman did not understand, and beat her hands.
“I think it was my husband,” she said. “Alack a day! to-morrow night I shall die, and who will take care of my little boy, and see that he does not starve? for his father would beat and ill-treat him if he found him.” Then the potter’s wife kneeled down beside the gipsy woman, and kissed her on the forehead.