Page:Researches respecting the Book of Sindibad and Portuguese Folk-Tales.djvu/133

111 XXVII.—.

There lived once a boy whose father and mother were desirous that he should learn some trade. He had no wish to do so, but, as his parents insisted upon it, he undertook to learn the trade of a shoemaker. But as soon as the father died he desisted from work and gave up making shoes. The mother was very angry with him for this and turned him out of doors. The boy told his mother that he would be sure to return home a rich man some day, and that he meant to marry the first female he met on his way. He took a basket with all his shoemaker's tools and went away. He journeyed many leagues through some forest and overgrown places, and meeting with a large square stone on his way he sat upon it, took out a loaf from his basket, find began to eat. From under the stone a large spider came out, and the boy had hardly seen her when he said to her, "You shall be my wife." The spider upon hearing this crawled inside the basket, but the boy made a hole in the loaf he carried and put her in it. He walked and he walked, and he sighted at a great distance an old house. He entered it, placed the basket on the floor, and the spider came out of it and went crawling up the walls until she reached the ceiling, and commenced to make a web. The boy turned towards her and looking up said, "That is the way I like to see women, fond of work." The spider made no answer. The boy then went seeking for work at a neighbouring village. As it happened that in that village there were no shoemakers he was welcomed among them, and they gave him plenty of work to do. As the youth found that he was making a fortune he engaged a servant-maid to attend upon his wife, and brought her to the old house where the spider had remained. He furnished the house and bought a little clay stove and some plates and dishes for the dinner. He then went out