much meat as would sup two people. When they had eaten, the woman said:
‘Alas! where are now our poor children? they would make a good feast of what we have left here; but it was you, William, who had a mind to lose them: I told you we should repent of it. What are they now doing in the forest? Alas! dear God, the wolves have perhaps already eaten them up: thou art very inhuman thus to have lost thy children.’
The fagot-maker grew at last quite out of patience, for she repeated it above twenty times, that they should repent of it, and that she was in the right of it for so saying. He threatened to beat her if she did not hold her tongue. It was not that the fagot-maker was not, perhaps, more vexed than his wife, but that she teased him, and that he was of the humour of a great many others, who love wives who speak well, but think those very importunate who are continually doing so. She was half-drowned in tears, crying out:
‘Alas! where are now my children, my poor children?’
She spake this so very loud that the children, who were at the gate, began to cry out all together:
‘Here we are! Here we are!’
She ran immediately to open the door, and said, hugging them:
‘I am glad to see you, my dear children; you are very hungry
