Page:Chinese Fables and Folk Stories.djvu/135

Rh give you rain to drink. I would cause the wind to blow hard until you fell down dead.

"You see I have the sweetest of flowers and the people all like me. One day two women passed by here and one of them said, 'Mön-Tien-Sing, how I wish that I might take you with me. You are so beautiful, but I fear you do not like me. Three times I have gathered your flowers for my hair, but I was careless and passed by a bush and it did but touch them when their lovely petals all fell to the earth. I wish that I might take you to my garden, and that you would grow there and open your beautiful flowers every third moon forever.'

"My name is Mön-Tien-Sing which means Flowers-every-three-moons. If you do not know another meaning it has, I will tell you.

"When you look in the sky on a summer night do you know how many stars are there? Even man can not count a clear sky filled with shining stars. I am Mön-Tien-Sing. Mön means full; Tien means heaven; and Sing means stars:—'sky filled with stars'—that is my name. I grow very fast. Every three moons I bear a thousand and a thousand flowers. I do not need servants to care for me, for I grow everywhere. Even the chickens and birds like me. They come to me and eat my seeds and grow fat.

"If I were the Creator, the Mön-Tien-Sing would