Engel's huwelijk

Summary

Engel, working as maid-servant for a rich, stingy farmer, receives from him two rixdollars for her services and his advice to buy a lottery-ticket. When she goes into town, Amsterdam, she decides to spend the money on three pairs of stockings. Back at the farm, she puts on a pair of the new stockings and leaves the house to go shopping. In her absence the farmer enters her room to look for the lottery-ticket. What he finds is a card with the number 9, which he believes is the number of the lottery-ticket but which is actually the card that was attached to the stockings. Every day he checks the lottery prize lists, until one day 9 is the winning number. Imagining that Engel has won 100,000 guilders, he proposes to her and is accepted. After the marriage, he immediately demands to see the lottery-ticket. When his wife tells him what she really bought, the shock kills him. Engel inherits a considerable sum from the old skinflint and can now live the life of a rich and undoubtedly merry widow.