en her meanness and shabby ways put him to
shame. But he had not the courage to rule her, and she only got worse
and worse.

After she had been married a few months the bride wanted to go into the
city and buy herself some new dresses. She had never been there before,
and when she had finished her shopping, she thought she would pay a
visit to her unknown sister-in-law, and rest for a bit. The house she
was seeking was in a broad street, and _ought_ to have been very
magnificent, but the carved stone portico enclosed a mean little door of
rough wood, while a row of beautiful pillars led to nothing. The
dwellings on each side were in the same unfinished condition, and water
trickled down the walls. Most people would have considered it a wretched
place, and turned their backs on it as soon as they could, but this lady
saw that by spending some money the houses could be made as splendid as
they were originally intended to be, and she instantly resolved to get
them for herself.

Full of this idea she walked up the marble staircase, and entered the
little room where her sister-in-law sat making clothes for her
children. The bride seemed full of interest in the houses, and asked a
great many questions about them, so that her new relations liked her
much better than they expected, and hoped they might be good friends.
However, as soon as she reached home, she went straight to her husband,
and told him that he must get back those houses from his brother, as
they would exactly suit her, and she could easily make them into a
palace as fine as the king's. But her husband only told her that she
might buy houses in some other part of the town, for she could not have
those, as he had long since made a gift of them to his brother, who had
lived there for many years past.

At this answer the wife grew very angry. She began to cry, and made such
a noise that all the neighbours heard her and put their heads out of the
windows, to see what was the matter. 'It was absurd,' she sobbed out,
'quite unjust. Indeed, if you came to think of it, the gift was worth
nothing, as when her husband made it he was a bachelor, and since then
he had been married, and she had never given her consent to any such
thing.' And so she lamented all day and all night, till the poor man was
nearly worried to death; and at last he did what she wished, and
summoned his brother in a court of law to give up the houses which, he
said, had only been lent to him. But