The potter’s wife poured some water into the little clay cup, and stooped her face and drank it, that the woman might be content, and when she had done so, the gipsy folded her hands and lay back and died. But when she had tasted the water out of the wet clay, the potter’s wife thought of her husband, and she called his name, and cried to him to come and help her with the poor gipsy woman. And then she thought of how long it was since he had been with her, and she began to cry, and wept bitterly as she leant over the dead woman. “Oh, where is he gone? why did I drive him from me?” she said. “Have I been mad? Truly the poor gipsy spoke rightly, that if a woman has a husband who loves her and works for her, she should cherish him with all her might. Alas, alas! and now my husband is out in the wide world, and I am alone here with no one to help me; until this poor woman told me, I never knew how wrong I was.” Then she looked at the gipsy woman lying in all her rags, and she remembered her promise to her, and she took the fine linen cloth in which was woven the gold heart and the gilt cup, and she clothed her in it as if she were a princess, and the next day the poor woman was buried, and no one knew from whence she came nor to whom she belonged. Then the potter’s wife sat down, and grieved bitterly, for she didn’t know what it would be best to do to find her husband again, and tell him that she loved him as at first. At first she thought she would go out and seek for him in the wide, wide world, but then she remembered how he bid her wait where she was till he came back, and she knew she ought to do what he had told her; but as now she had three to keep instead of two, she feared they would be very poor, and as she had buried the gipsy in the fine gold and white cloth woven with her hair, she had not got it to sell, and she had not any money left wherewith to buy more fine thread to weave. The gipsy’s little boy was a pretty boy, with dark eyes like his mother’s, and when she looked at him she said they would all three starve together, but she would keep him, as she had promised his mother, rather than turn him out into the cold streets. So she washed him, and mended his rags as best she might, and then she began to seek everywhere for something she might weave to sell, and keep them from starving. She wandered round the garden, and in and out of the house, and the gipsy boy, who was a clever, bright lad, went with her. “What are you searching for?” he asked. “I am searching for thread, that I may weave into some kind of cloth and sell,” she said. “Otherwise we shall surely starve, for I have no money left to buy it with, and nothing more left to sell.”