If , when I am busy , I ask him to go and feed the poultry , he is certain to give them some poisonous stuff instead of their proper food , and when I visit the yard next I find them all dead . Once he even took my best bonnet , when I had gone away to my sick mother , and when I came back I found he had given it to the hen to lay her eggs in . And you know yourself that , only last week , when I sent him to buy a cask of butter , he returned driving a hundred and fifty ducks which someone had induced him to take , and not one of them would lay . ' ` Yes , I am afraid he IS trying , ' replied the first ; ` but let us put them to the proof , and see which of them is the most foolish . ' So , about the time that she expected her husband home from work , she got out her spinning-wheel , and sat busily turning it , taking care not even to look up from her work when the man came in . For some minutes he stood with his mouth open watching her , and as she still remained silent , he said at last : ` Have you gone mad , wife , that you sit spinning without anything on the wheel ? ' ` YOU may think that there is nothing on it , ' answered she , ` but I can assure you that there is a large skein of wool , so fine that nobody can see it , which will be woven into a coat for you . ' ` Dear me ! ' he replied , ` what a clever wife I have got ! If you had not told me I should never have known that there was any wool on the wheel at all . But now I really do seem to see something . ' The woman smiled and was silent , and after spinning busily for an hour more , she got up from her stoop , and began to weave as fast as she could . At last she got up , and said to her husband : ' I am too tired to finish it to-night , so I shall go to bed , and to-morrow I shall only have the cutting and stitching to do . ' So the next morning she got up early , and after she had cleaned her house , and fed her chickens , and put everything in its place again , she bent over the kitchen table , and the sound of her big scissors might be heard snip ! snap ! as far as the garden . Her husband could not see anything to snip at ; but then he was so stupid that was not surprising ! After the cutting came the sewing . The woman patted and pinned and fixed and joined , and then , turning to the man , she said : ` Now it is ready for you to try on . ' And she made him take off his coat , and stand up in front of her , and once more she patted an pinned and fixed and joined , and was very careful in smoothing out every wrinkle .
` It does not feel very warm , ' observed the man at last , when he had borne all this patiently XXXXX a long time .
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