Page:Anthology of Japanese Literature.pdf/218

214 and see that it gets something to eat.” And her children and grandchildren laughed at her and teased her. “How touching! Why do you worry so much about a sparrow?” “Say what you please, it’s a poor helpless creature,” she would reply.

As a result of the good care she took of it, the bird finally was able to fly once more. “Now no crow will get it,” said the old woman, and took it outdoors to see how well it could fly. When she placed it on the palm of her hand and held it out at arm’s length, away the sparrow flew with a flutter of its wings. After that the old woman, in the loneliness and tedium of her life, longed for the bird. She would say, “How sad that it has flown away after so many months and days of taking it in for the night and feeding it in the morning!” As usual, everyone laughed at her.

Some twenty days later the woman heard the loud chirping of a sparrow outside her house. “Why, that’s a sparrow! Perhaps the same one has come back,” she thought, going out to look. Indeed, it was the very same sparrow. “Oh, how touching! How touching that it has not forgotten me and has come back,” she said. The sparrow, peering at the old woman’s face, dropped something very small that it held in its beak, apparently intending to leave whatever it was for her, and then flew away. “What can the sparrow have dropped?” wondered the woman. She went over and discovered that it had let fall a single gourd seed. “It must have had some reason for bringing this,” she said, picking it up. Her children mocked her, “How wonderful! She gets a present from a sparrow and acts as if it were some great treasure!” “Say what you will. I’ll plant it and see what happens,” she replied, and this she did.

When autumn came the plant bore a great many gourds. They were not of the usual kind, but much larger and more numerous. The old woman was exceedingly pleased. No matter how many she picked or gave away to the neighbors, more still remained than she could possibly use. Her children and grandchildren who had laughed at her ate the gourds every day.

At last, when she had distributed the gourds to everyone in the village, she decided that she would cure seven or eight of the largest and finest to use as containers. These she hung indoors and left to