“The gipsy speaks truth,” he cried, “when he says she is the most beautiful woman in the world, but he speaks false when he says that she will ever love him; for he has stolen that cup, and I shall take it from him, and if he tries to stop me, why then I will fight him, and let every one see who is the better fellow of the two.”
But when the gipsy had seen the rhyme upon the mat, he stood and stared as if he were made of stone, and said no word to the potter, and indeed scarcely seemed to notice that he had taken away the cup from him. Then the potter turned to the man who owned the mat and said, “If you will sell me your mat I will pay you handsomely for it, and I beg you to tell me who made it, and where you got it, for I would like to buy some more like it.”
The traveller was much astonished, but he told the potter that it was made by a woman who lived in a village a little way off, and she sat by her doorway and wove mats, with a gipsy boy to help her; and she was the loveliest woman he had ever seen on earth, with eyes just like blue cornflowers and hair like golden corn. Then the potter took his bowl and the mat and started to go home, but the gipsy slunk out of the room and went into the night, and nobody noticed him.
Meantime the potter’s wife continued to grieve and lament, for in spite of her taking the gipsy boy’s advice, and telling all things that she loved her husband and wished him back, he did not come back to her; and though she wove her rhyme into every mat that she made, she despaired of the potter’s ever seeing one. The only thing which seemed to console her, was the little brown clay cup that the gipsy woman had thrown for her, before she died. As it had never been baked in the oven, the clay was dry and hard and cracked, and it was a sorry thing to look at, but still the potter’s wife kept it beside her, and would drink out of nothing else, and from time to time she kissed it, and laid her cheek against it.
The gipsy boy said to her—
“If I were you I should watch for my husband all day. I would weave my mats in the doorway, and look up the road both ways, from morn till night, otherwise your husband will come back and go past the cottage and you will never know.” So she took her loom and sat by the roadway, and watched, and looked over the hill and to right and left for whoever might come. And often the gipsy boy would watch too, and look from the other side of the cottage while the potter’s wife sat in the front. One day the gipsy boy ran round to her and said, “There is some one coming up the road who will come here, but it is not your husband. It is my father, and he will want to take me away, and he will beat me as he did my mother. And if he gets hold of the cup that my mother made for you, he knows all her charms, and he can undo what she did, and perhaps can throw some evil spell on us all, so that your husband will never return again. So the best thing will be for you to give me the cup and let me hide myself with it, and then you must tell him that you do not know where I am, and if he asks, tell him that the cup is gone; and when he is gone I will come back again, but promise that you will not give me up to him.”
So the potter’s wife promised that she would never give up the little boy, and she bid him take the cup and run quickly and hide himself, and then she took her little girl by the hand and sat and waited for the gipsy man to come, though she trembled with fear, and wished him far away.
Presently the gipsy man came up to the front of the cottage where the potter’s wife sat, and bid her good-day.
“I was here before,” he said. “And you gave me something to eat and drink. Is your husband come back, for he was away then?”
“My husband is away still,” she said. “But soon I hope he will be here.”