Page:Legends of Rubezahl, and Other Tales (1845).djvu/183

 “And has thy husband no hands to labour with?” asked Rubezahl.

“Hands! ay, that he has, and stirring ones too, as I sometimes find to my cost.”

“How!” cried the Gnome indignantly, “does thy husband dare lift his hand against such a wife as thou? I’ll twist the rascal’s neck round.”

“You’ll have enough to do, if you undertake to twist the neck of every husband who beats his wife. Men are a sad set, but I married for better, for worse, and I must go through with it as well as I can.”

“But if thou knew’st that men are a sad set, ’twas surely a foolish thing in thee to marry?”

“Very likely; but Stephen was a brisk, well-looking young man, in a good way of business, I a poor girl, without a farthing. He came and asked me to marry him, gave me, for earnest, a wild man’s thaler, and the bargain was concluded; he took away the thaler afterwards, but the wild man still remains to me.”

“Perhaps,” said the Spirit, laughingly, “thou mad’st him wild by thy perverse humours?”

“Ah, whatever perverse humours I might have had, he has long since beaten out of me. Moreover, Stephen is a mere skin-flint; if I ask him but for a groat, he storms, rages, and makes as much noise in the house, as they say you sometimes do in your