At length, the woman, in her despondency, fell to crying.  Her husband very kindly inquired, “What is the matter, my dear wife?”

“I have been thinking,” said she, “of our hard fate, and it does seem to me a hard case that God should curse the ground for Adam’s sake, just because he and his wife had eaten a green apple; and now all their descendants must earn their bread by the sweat of their brow, all their days.”

The man replied, “Do not, my dear wife, distress yourself thus, seeing it will do no good.”

She continued, “I do think that Adam and Eve were very foolish to listen to any thing that a serpent had to say.  If I had been in the place of Eve I am sure I should have done otherwise.”

To this her husband replied, “True, my dear wife, Eve was a very silly woman.  I think, if I had been in Adam’s place, before I would have listened to her foolish advice, and run such a hazard, I would have given her a smart box on the ear, and told her to hold her tongue, and to mind her own business.”

This remark made his wife very angry, and here followed a long dialogue on this topic till they began mutually to criminate each other as well as the serpent.

Now, a gentleman, who had all this time been concealed behind the trees, and had heard their complaints, and listened with grief to their fault-finding disposition, came forward and spoke to them very kindly.

He said, “My friends, you seem to be hard at work, and very unhappy.  Pray tell me the cause of your misery, and whether I can do anything to comfort you?”

So they repeated to this gentleman what they had been saying.

He replied to them thus:  “Now, my dear friends, I am truly sorry for you, and I desire to make you more comfortable.  I have a large estate, and I wish to make others as happy as I am myself.  I have a fine house, plenty of servants, and every thing desirable to eat and to drink.  I have fine grounds, filled with shrubbery and fruit trees.  If you will go and live with me you have only to obey the regulations of my house, and as long as you do this and are contented, you shall be made welcome.”

So they went with this gentleman.  At once he took off their rough and ragged garments, and clad them in a fine suit of clothes, suited to the place, and put them into a spacious apartment, where for a time they lived very happily.

One day this gentleman came to them, and said business of importance would call him from home for some days.  In the mean time he hoped they would be happy and do every thing in their power to reflect honor upon his hospitality till his return.  He said he had but one other suggestion to make, and that was, that for his sake they would be very careful to set a good example before his servants, and do every thing cheerfully that they should direct, for up to this hour not one of his servants had ever questioned the reasonableness of his commands.