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‘I caught a flounder’ he replied, ‘who said he was an enchanted prince, and I threw him back into the water, and let him swim away.’
‘Did you not wish?’ she asked.
‘No,’ he said, ‘what should I wish for?’
‘Why, at least for a better hut than this dirty place; how unlucky you did not think of it. He would have promised you whatever you asked for. However, go and call him now, perhaps he will answer you.’
The husband did not like this task at all; he thought it was nonsense. However, to please his wife he went and stood by the sea. When he saw how green and dark it looked he felt much discouraged, but made up a rhyme and said
Flounder, founder, in the sea
Come I pray and talk to me,
For my wife, dame Isabel,
Sent me here a tale to tell.
Then the fish came swimming up to the surface and said, ‘What do you want with me?’
‘Ah,’ said the man, ‘I caught you and let you go again to-day, without wishing, and my wife says I ought to have wished, for she cannot live any longer in such a miserable hut as ours and she wants a better one.’
‘Go home, man,’ said the fish, ‘your wife has all she wants.’ So the husband went home and there was his wife no longer in her dirty hovel, but sitting at the door of a neat little cottage, looking very happy. She took her husband by the hand and said, ‘come in and see how much better it is than the other old hut.’
So he followed her in and found a beautiful parlour, and a bright stove in it, a soft bed in the bed-room, and a kitchen full of earthenware, and tin and copper vessels for cooking, looking so bright and clean, and all of the very best. Outside was a little farm yard, with hens and chickens running about, and beyond, a garden containing plenty of fruit and vegetables. ‘See,’ said the wife, ‘is it not delightful?’ ‘Ah yes! replied her husband, ‘as long as
