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it is new you will be quite contented; but after that we shall see.’
‘Yes, we shall see,’ said the wife.
A fortnight passed and the husband felt quite happy, till one day his wife startled him by saying ‘Husband, after all, this is only a cottage, very much too small for us, and the yard and the garden cover very little ground. If the fish is really a prince in disguise, he could very well give us a larger house. I should like above all things to live in a large castle built of stone. Go to the fish, and ask him to build us a castle.’
‘Ah, wife,’ he said ‘this cottage is good enough for us; what do we want with a castle’?
‘Go along,’ she replied, ‘the flounder will be sure to give what you ask.’
‘Nay; wife,’ said he, ‘the fish gave us the cottage at first, but if I go again he may be angry.’
‘Never mind,’ she replied; ‘he can do what I wish easily, and I have no doubt he will; so go and try.’
The husband rose to go with a heavy heart. He said to himself, ‘This is not right,’ and when he reached the sea he noticed that the water was now a dark blue yet very calm, so he began his old song.
Flounder, flounder in the sea
Come I pray and talk to me—
For my wife, dame Isabel,
Wishes what I fear to tell.
‘Now then, what do you want’ said the fish, lifting his head above the water.
‘Oh dear,’ said the fisherman, in a frightened tone, ‘my wife wants to live in a great stone castle.’
‘Go home, man, and you will find her there’ was the reply.
The husband hastened home, and where the cottage had been there stood a fresh stone castle, and his wife tripped down the steps saying, ‘come in to me, and I will show you what a beautiful dwelling we now have.’
The fisherman’s wife soon becomes discontented in the the splendid castle, and her next wish is to be queen.
