‘Well,’ said the man, ‘you need not make so much noise about it; I am sure I had much better let a flounder that can talk swim away.’ With these words he put him back again into the shining water, and the flounder sank to the bottom, leaving a long streak of blood behind. Then the fisherman got up, and went home to his wife in the hut.
‘Husband,’ said his wife, ‘have you caught nothing to-day?’
‘No,’ said the man. ‘I caught a flounder who said he was an enchanted prince, so I let him swim away again.’
‘Did you wish nothing from him?’ said his wife.
‘No,’ said the man; ‘what should I have wished from him?’
‘Ah!’ said the woman, ‘it’s dreadful to have to live all one’s life in this hut that is so small and dirty; you ought to have wished for a cottage. Go now and call him; say to him that we choose to have a cottage, and he will certainly give it you.’
‘Alas!’ said the man, ‘why should I go down there again?’
‘Why,’ said his wife, ‘you caught him, and then let him go again, so he is sure to give you what you ask. Go down quickly.’
The man did not like going at all, but as his wife was not to be persuaded, he went down to the sea.
When he came there the sea was quite green and yellow, and was no longer shining. So he stood on the shore and said:
Into a flounder in the sea.
Come! for my wife, Ilsebel,
Wishes what I dare not tell.’
Then the flounder came swimming up and said, ‘Well, what does she want?’
‘Alas!’ said the man, ‘my wife says I ought to have kept you and wished something from you. She does not want to live any longer in the hut; she would like a cottage.’
‘Go home, then,’ said the flounder; ‘she has it.’
So the man went home, and there was his wife no longer in the hut, but in its place was a beautiful cottage, and his wife was sitting in front of the door on a bench. She took him by the hand and said to him, ‘Come inside, and see if this is not much better.’ They went in, and inside the cottage was a tiny hall, and a beautiful sitting-room, and a bedroom in which stood a bed, a kitchen and a dining-room all furnished with the best of everything, and fitted up with every kind of tin and copper utensil. And outside was a little
