“A mat, a mat,” he cried, “who wants to buy a good straw mat to wipe their feet on when they are dirty, or for the cat to sit on by the fire, or to put over the fowl-house and keep it warm?”
At first all the people he met laughed at him, and said nobody wished to buy a mat at all. Then he turned into the ale-house. There were some men smoking and keeping themselves warm by the fire, and when the host saw him, and the mat over his shoulder, he said it was quite a well-made thing, and he would have it to lay down by his doorway for in-comers to tread on; and then one and another looked at it, and the boy told them where it came from, and said he could bring them plenty more straw mats and carpets, all as good or better, and so well worked that they would last almost for ever; and presently one and another began to say that they would buy them, and when he had taken his money, the gipsy boy ran home well content.
So the potter’s wife sat all day weaving straw mats, and presently she got to do them so well, that from far and near the people sent to buy them of her. Then after a time she put patterns into them, made with red, and black, and white straws, but do what she could, the patterns always came out in the shape of a cup, and still she wept and grieved all day long. Then the gipsy lad said to her—
“What are you crying for now? You have plenty to eat and drink. Tell me why you are crying, and I will help you if I can, because you took my mother into your house to die, and buried her in your fine cloth like a princess.”
“I cry because my husband has gone a long way off,” said the potter’s wife, “and he doesn’t know that I love him, and he will never come back to me, for when he went away I hated him.”
“He will never know it if you don’t try to tell him,” said the gipsy boy. “You should tell it to every one you meet, to all the birds of the air, and the wild animals too. That is what my mother told me to do, if I wanted to send news abroad. You should say it even to the winds, and write it in the sand, and on the earth, and on the leaves of the trees in case they blow about, for she said all things could pass on a secret, though none can keep one. And why don’t you weave it into your mats too? For the people who buy them take them far and near, and maybe he will see one, and know that you want him to come home again.”
Then the potter’s wife tried to weave her secret into her mats, and beside the pattern of the cup she wove a little verse—
“From the gipsy’s cup I drank for love,
From the gipsy’s cup I drank for hate,
But when she gave me a cup again