“Well, Grilly,” he asked, “are you pleased with me?”
“Listen,” she replied, “it is true I now live in a beautiful house with turrets, a marble staircase and rooms exquisitely furnished, but I have no money. Go back to the sea ... catch the fish again and ask him to give us as much money as the richest man on the coast between Ostend and Dunkirk. Woe betide you if you return without it!”
The good man again returned to the sea, and when he had caught the fish and the latter again asked for his freedom, the fisherman answered, much embarrassed at asking yet another favour:
“O little fish so red and fine,
You shall live, O little fish mine;
But Susie Grill my wife
Wants to lead an easy life,
Heaps of silver and gold.
You will think her very bold.
But little fish, never mind,
O little fish to her be kind.”
Again the fish arose and replied:
“Susie Grill is neither shy nor bold,
She shall have riches and wealth untold.”
When Tintelentyn returned, he found his wife in her bedroom seated before a large chest overflowing with gold. She counted it without ceasing, arranging it in piles of a hundred on the table. Before the chest was another brimful of silver. She told her husband that she was going to Bruges the next morning to buy a coach and four and to engage a staff of servants. Her chef was to be a master of his art, he must out-rival the Count of Flanders’ chef.
SHE COUNTED IT WITHOUT CEASING
“Well, are you happy now, little wife?” Tintelentyn murmured.