So the potter’s wife sat all day weaving straw mats, and presently she got to do them so well, that from far and near the people sent to buy them of her. Then after a time she put patterns into them, made with red, and black, and white straws, but do what she could, the patterns always came out in the shape of a cup, and still she wept and grieved all day long. Then the gipsy lad said to her— “What are you crying for now? You have plenty to eat and drink. Tell me why you are crying, and I will help you if I can, because you took my mother into your house to die, and buried her in your fine cloth like a princess.” “I cry because my husband has gone a long way off,” said the potter’s wife, “and he doesn’t know that I love him, and he will never come back to me, for when he went away I hated him.” “He will never know it if you don’t try to tell him,” said the gipsy boy. “You should tell it to every one you meet, to all the birds of the air, and the wild animals too. That is what my mother told me to do, if I wanted to send news abroad. You should say it even to the winds, and write it in the sand, and on the earth, and on the leaves of the trees in case they blow about, for she said all things could pass on a secret, though none can keep one. And why don’t you weave it into your mats too? For the people who buy them take them far and near, and maybe he will see one, and know that you want him to come home again.” Then the potter’s wife tried to weave her secret into her mats, and beside the pattern of the cup she wove a little verse— “From the gipsy’s cup I drank for love, From the gipsy’s cup I drank for hate, But when she gave me a cup again My love had gone and I drank too late.” “Now,” cried the gipsy boy, “your husband may see it, and perhaps he will come home, and all will be well with us.” But still the potter journeyed far into the world, and wherever he went he asked if any gipsy had been near there; and if there happened to be a gipsy camp in the neighbourhood, he went to it at once, and asked for a gipsy woman with red beads and gold chains in her hair, or for a gipsy man who carried a brown cup with him. But though he saw hundreds of gipsies, yet he never again saw the girl who had thrown the cup, and none of the men knew anything about the man, nor could tell him anything about the little brown bowl. Then he went to the shops in the big towns where jars and bowls are sold, and asked for a cup that had a spell in it, for he thought if they sold such a one, they might know how to help him to undo the work of the gipsy’s bowl, but everywhere the people only laughed at him. So he went through strange countries, seeing strange things, but none of them gave him any pleasure, since he was always thinking of his wife at home. Then he returned to his native land, and pondered whether he should go back to his own cottage, but his heart failed him, and he kept far from the little village where it stood.