the child grumbled to himself, saying, 'This is only my aunt; that is why she did not punish the other boy. If she had been my mother she would certainly have given him a great knock on his head, to punish him for knocking mine, but because she is only my aunt, I suppose she doesn't care.' The Sowkar's wife overheard him, and felt very grieved, saying, 'This little child, whom I have watched over from his babyhood, does not love me as if I were his mother. It is of no use; he is not my own, and he will never care for me as such.' So she took him home to his own mother, saying, 'Sister, I have brought you back your child.'—'How is this?' asked her sister; 'you adopted him as yours for all his life. Why do you now bring him back?' The Sowkar's wife did not tell her sister what she had heard the boy say, but she answered, 'Very well, let him be yours and mine; he shall live a while with you, and then come and visit me; we will both take care of him.' And, returning to her husband, she told him what she had done, saying, 'All my pains are useless; you know how kind I have been to my sister's boy, yet, after all I have done for him, at the end of seven years he does not love me as well as he does his mother, whom he has scarcely seen. Now, therefore, I will never rest until I have seen Mahadeo,[1] and ask him to grant that I may have a child of my own.'[2]
'What a foolish woman you are!' answered her husband; 'why not be content with your lot? How do you think you will find Mahadeo? Do you know the road to heaven?'—' Nay,' she replied, 'but I will seek for it until I find it out, and if I never find it, it cannot be helped, but I will return home no more unless my prayer is answered.' So she left the house, and wandered into the jungle, and after she had travelled through it for many, many days and left her own land very far behind, she came to the borders of another country, even the Madura Tinivelly[3] country, where a great river rolled down towards the sea. On the river-bank sat two women—a Ranee named Coplinghee Ranee, and a Nautch woman.
Now, neither the Ranee, the Nautch woman, nor the Sowkar's wife had ever seen each other before they met at the river-side. Then, as she sat down to rest and drink some of the water, the Ranee turned to the Sowkar's wife, and said to her, 'Who are you,
