servant, 'your wits are wool-gathering!What's the matter?'
'Don't! please don't!' cried Bhagtu; 'I wish the wouldn't ask me, for I am trying to forget all about it.It is too dreadfultoo too terrible!'
At last, however, yielding to the maid's entreaties, he replied, with many sobs and tears
'The ugly hen painted.
By jealousy tainted,
The pretty hen dyed.
Lamenting his bride,
The cock, bald and bare,
Sobs loud in despair;
The pipal tree grieves
By shedding its leaves;
The buffalo mourns
By casting her horns;
The stream, weeping fast,
Grows briny at last;
The cuckoo with sighs
Blinds one of its eyes;
Bhagtu's grief so intense is,
He loses his sense!'
'How very sad!' exclaimed the maidservant.'I don't wonder at your distress; but it is always so in this miserable world!everything goes wrong!'
Whereupon she fell to railing at everybody and everything in the world, until the Queen said to her, 'What is the matter, my child?What distress you?
'Oh!' replied the maidservant, 'old story! every one is miserable, and I most of all!Such dreadful news!
