d prince! What good will it do you
to kill me? I sha'n't be good to eat; put me back into the water, and
leave me to swim about."

"Well," said the fisherman, "you need not make so many words about it.
I am quite ready to put back a flounder that can talk." And so saying,
he put back the flounder into the shining water, and it sank down to
the bottom, leaving a streak of blood behind it.

Then the fisherman got up and went back to his wife in the hovel.
"Husband," she said, "hast thou caught nothing to-day?"

"No," said the man; "all I caught was one flounder, and he said he was
an enchanted prince, so I let him go swim again."

"Didst thou not wish for anything then?" asked the good wife.

"No," said the man; "what was there to wish for?"

"Alas!" said his wife; "isn't it bad enough always to live in this
wretched hovel? Thou mightest at least have wished for a nice clean
cottage. Go back and call him; tell him I want a pretty cottage; he
will surely give us that!"

"Alas," said the man, "what am I to go back there for?"

"Well," said the woman, "it was thou who caught him and let him go
again; for certain he will do that for thee. Be off now!"

The man was still not very willing to go, but he did not want to vex
his wife, and at last he went back to the sea.

He found the sea no longer bright and shining, but dull and green. He
stood by it and said:

"Flounder, flounder in the sea,
Prythee, hearken unto me:
My wife, Ilsebil, will have her own way
Whatever I wish, whatever I say."

The flounder came swimming up, and said: "Well, what do you want?"

"Alas!" said the man; "I had to call you, for my wife said I ought to
have wished for something, as I caught you. She doesn't want to live
in our miserable hovel any longer; she wants a pretty cottage."

"Go home again, then," said the flounder; "she has her wish fully."

The man went home and found his wife no longer in the old hut, but a
pretty little cottage stood in its place, and his wife was sitting on
a bench by the door.

She took him by the hand, and said: "Come and look in here--isn't this
much better?"

They went inside and found a pretty sitting-room, and a bedroom with
a bed in it, a kitchen, and a larder furnished with everything of the
best in tin and brass, and every possible requisite. Outside there
was a little yard with chickens and ducks, and a little garden full of
vegetables and fruit.

"Look!" said the woman, "is not thi