as for a third time he returned. 'I don't know, indeed; indeed I beg your pardon,' she said; 'but I know not why, I felt so frightened.' 'Have any of the Ranees been unkind to you?' he asked. 'No; none,' she answered; 'in fact, I have seen none of them.' 'You are a silly child,' said he, stroking her hair. 'Affairs of the state call me away. You must try and keep a good heart till my return.' And for the fourth time he disappeared.
A little while after, Guzra Bai had a hundred and one children! a hundred boys and one girl. When the twelve Ranees heard this, they said to each other, 'Guzra Bai, the Malee's daughter, will rank higher than us; she will have great power and influence as mother to the heir to the Raj; let us kill these children, and tell our husband that she is a sorceress; then will he love her no longer, and his old affection for us will return.' So the twelve Ranees all went over to Guzra Bai's house. When Guzra Bai saw them coming, she feared they meant to do her some harm, so she seized her little golden bell, and rang, and rang, and rang—but no Rajah came. She had called him back so often, that he did not believe she really needed his help. And thus the poor woman was left at the mercy of her implacable enemies.
Now the nurse who had charge of the hundred and one babies was an old servant of the twelve Ranees, and moreover a very wicked woman, able and willing to do whatever her twelve wicked old mistresses ordered. So when they said to her, 'Can you kill these children?' she answered, 'Nothing is easier; I will throw them out upon the dust-heap behind the palace, where the rats and hawks and vultures will have left none of them remaining by tomorrow morning.' 'So be it,' said the Ranees. Then the nurse took the hundred and one little innocent children—the hundred little boys and the one little girl—and threw them behind the palace on the dust-heap, close to some large rat-holes; and after that, she and the twelve Ranees placed a very large stone in each of the babies' cradles, and said to Guzra Bai, 'Oh, you evil witch in disguise, do not hope any longer to impose by your arts on the Rajah's credulity. See, your children have all turned into stones. See these, your pretty babies!'—and with that they tumbled the hundred and one stones down in a great heap on the floor. Then Guzra Bai began to cry, for she knew it was not true; but what could one poor woman do against thirteen? At the Rajah's return the twelve Ranees accused Guzra Bai of being a witch, and the nurse testified that the hundred and one children she had charge
