XXII.
CHANDRA'S VENGEANCE.
THERE was once a Sowkar's[1] wife who had no children. One day she went crying to her husband and saying, 'What an unhappy woman I am to have no children! If I had any children to amuse me I should be quite happy.' He answered, 'Why should you be miserable on that account? though you have no children, your sister has eight or nine; why not adopt one of hers?' The Sowkar's wife agreed; and adopting one of her sister's little boys, who was only six months old, brought him up as her own son. Some time afterwards, when the child was one day returning from school, he and one of his school-fellows quarrelled and began to fight, and the other boy (being much the older and stronger of the two) gave him a great blow on the head and knocked him down, and hurt him very much. The boy ran crying home, and the Sowkar's wife bathed his head and bandaged it up, but she did not send and punish the boy who hurt him, for she thought, 'One can't keep children shut up always in the house, and they will be fighting together sometimes and hurting themselves.' Then
- ↑ Merchant's.
187
