Free The Firebird and Other Russian Fairy Tales by Arthur Ransome

and there, outside the hut, was the old woman, looking at the handsomest bread trough that ever was seen on earth. Painted it was, with little flowers, in three colours, and there were strips of gilding about its handles.
    â€œLook at this,” grumbled the old woman. “This is far too fine a trough for a tumble-down hut like ours. Why, there is scarcely a place in the roof where the rain does not come through. If we were to keep this trough in such a hut, it would be spoiled in a month. You must go back to your fish and ask it for a new hut.”
    â€œI hardly like to do that,” says the old man.
    â€œGet along with you,” says his wife. “If the fish can make a trough like this, a hut will be no trouble to him. And, after all, you must not forget he owes his life to you.”
    â€œI suppose that is true,” says the old man; but he went back to the shore with a heavy heart. He stood on the edge of the sea and called out, doubtfully,—
    â€œHead in air and tail in sea,
Fish, fish, listen to me.”
    Instantly there was a ripple in the water, and the golden fish was looking at him with its wise eyes.
    â€œWell?” says the fish.
    â€œMy old woman is so pleased with the trough that she wants a new hut to keep it in, because ours, if you could only see it, is really falling to pieces, and the rain comes in and——”
    â€œGo home,” says the fish.
    The old fisherman went home, but he could not find his old hut at all. At first he thought he had lost his way. But then he saw his wife. And she was walking about, first one way and then the other, looking at the finest hut that God ever gave a poor moujik to keep him from the rain and the cold, and the too great heat of the sun. It was built of sound logs, neatly finished at the ends and carved. And the overhanging of the roof was cut in patterns, so neat, so pretty, you could never think how they had been done. The old woman looked at it from all sides. And the old man stood, wondering. Then they went in together. And everything within the hut was new and clean. There were a fine big stove, and strong wooden benches, and a good table, and a fire lit in the stove, and logs ready to put in, and a samovar already on the boil—a fine new samovar of glittering brass.
    You would have thought the old woman would have been satisfied with that. Not a bit of it.
    â€œYou don’t know how to lift your eyes from the ground,” says she. “You don’t know what to ask. I am tired of being a peasant woman and a moujik’s wife. I was made for something better. I want to be a lady, and have good people to do the work, and see folk bow and curtsy to me when I meet them walking abroad. Go back at once to the fish, you old fool, and ask him for that, instead of bothering him for little trifles like bread troughs and moujiks’ huts. Off with you.”
    The old fisherman went back to the shore with a sad heart; but he was afraid of his wife, and he dared not disobey her. He stood on the shore, and called out in his windy old voice,—
    â€œHead in air and tail in sea,
Fish, fish, listen to me.”
    Instantly there was the golden fish looking at him with its wise eyes.
    â€œWell?” says the fish.
    â€œMy old woman won’t give me a moment’s peace,” says the old man; “and since she has the new hut—which is a fine one, I must say; as good a hut as ever I saw—she won’t be content at all. She is tired of being a peasant’s wife, and wants to be a lady with a house and servants, and to see the good folk curtsy to her when she meets them walking abroad.”
    â€œGo home,” says the fish.
    The old man went home, thinking about the hut, and how pleasant it would be to live in it, even if his wife were a lady.
    But when he got home the hut had gone, and in its place there was a fine brick house, three stories high. There were servants running this way and that in