with him always. "Sweet Puss, some men would pity me living alone here
with you after what has happened, but I would not change places while
you were living with any man for the whole world. Though you are a fox I
would rather live with you than any woman. I swear I would, and that too
if you were changed to anything." But then, catching her grave look, he
would say: "Do you think I jest on these things, my dear? I do not. I
swear to you, my darling, that all my life I will be true to you, will
be faithful, will respect and reverence you who are my wife. And I will
do that not because of any hope that God in His mercy will see fit to
restore your shape, but solely because I love you. However you may be
changed, my love is not."

Then anyone seeing them would have sworn that they were lovers, so
passionately did each look on the other.

Often he would swear to her that the devil might have power to work some
miracles, but that he would find it beyond him to change his love for
her.

These passionate speeches, however they might have struck his wife in an
ordinary way, now seemed to be her chief comfort. She would come to him,
put her paw in his hand and look at him with sparkling eyes shining
with joy and gratitude, would pant with eagerness, jump at him and lick
his face.

Now he had many little things which busied him in the house--getting his
meals, setting the room straight, making the bed and so forth. When he
was doing this housework it was comical to watch his vixen. Often she
was as it were beside herself with vexation and distress to see him in
his clumsy way doing what she could have done so much better had she