‘That’s no great matter,’ answered the old hag.[3] ‘Give me ten scudi for my niece and a new pair of shoes for me, and I’ll settle the matter.’
‘Here are the ten scudi,’ said the Devil; ‘it will be time enough to talk about the shoes when we see how you do the business.’
The bad old woman set off accordingly with her niece and the ten scudi, instructing her by the way what she was to do.
This husband and wife lived in a place where there was a house on one side and a shop on the other, so that through a window in the house where they lived they could give an eye to anything that went on in the shop.
Choosing a moment when the man was alone in the shop, she sent the girl in with the ten scudi; and the girl, who had been told what to do, selected a dress, and a handkerchief, and a number of fine things, and paid her ten scudi. Then she proceeded leisurely to put them on, and to walk up and down the shop in them. Meantime the bad old woman went up to the wife:—
‘Poor woman!’ she said. ‘Poor woman! Such a good woman as you are, and to have such a hypocrite of a husband!’
‘My husband a hypocrite!’ answered the wife. ‘What can you mean—he is the best man that ever was.’
‘Ah! he makes you think so, poor simple soul. But the truth is, he is very different from what you think.’
So they went on conversing, and the bad old woman all the time watching what was going on in the shop till the right moment came. Just as the girl was flaunting about and showing herself off, she said:
‘Look here, he has given all those things to that girl there.’