Atondido Stories
her kettle-drum, but he thought, "She does not really want me;
she is only trying to see if I will go to her."
Meanwhile the four other Queens came to her, and they said,
"Here it is the custom before a child is born to bind its mother's
eyes with a handkerchief that she may not see it just at first. So
let us bind your eyes." She answered, "Very well, bind my eyes."
The four wives then tied a handkerchief over them.
Soon after, the gardener's daughter had a beautiful little son,
with a moon on his forehead and a star on his chin, and before
the poor mother had seen him, the four wicked Queens took the
boy to the nurse and said to her, "Now you must not let this
child make the least sound for fear his mother should hear him;
and in the night you must either kill him, or else take him away,
so that his mother may never see him. If you obey our orders, we
will give you a great many rupees." All this they did out of spite.
The nurse took the little child and put him into a box, and the
four Queens went back to the gardener's daughter.
First they put a stone into her boy's little bed, and then they
took the handkerchief off her eyes and showed it her, saying,
"Look! this is your son!" The poor girl cried bitterly, and thought,
"What will the King say when he finds no child?" But she could
do nothing.
When the King came home; he was furious at hearing his
youngest wife, the gardener's daughter, had given him a stone
instead of the beautiful little son she had promised him. He
made her one of the palace servants, and never spoke to her.
In the middle of the night the nurse took the box in which
was the beautiful little prince, and went out to a broad plain in
the jungle. There she dug a hole, made the fastenings of the box
sure, and put the box into the hole, although the child in it was
still alive. The King's dog, whose name was Shankar, had
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