Page:Chinese Fables and Folk Stories.djvu/155

Rh that they would not come. She waited long, but they refused to go with her. Then she chided the rice birds and said, "You are a bad company, and you have tempted my children to join you. Why do you not tell them to come home with me, their mother? If you do not cease your evil actions, I shall eat you or drive you away."

The eagle mother flew away alone to the mountain, and she sat on a great rock and waited long for her children to come home.

The night came, but her little ones did not return. In her heart the eagle mother knew they were lost to her. All the dark night she cried aloud in her grief. In the morning she hunted long, but she could not find them. She said to herself:

"This is a strange and dreadful thing that has come to me. I remember that I once heard a quarrel-bird say that some of her children had left her in this same way, and she believed some bad boy had changed her eggs. For she had six yellow children in her nest, and when they could fly they went away with the yellow song birds. She found her own children one day in a camphor tree. I wish that I might find my own children."

Just then she met the quarrel-bird mother, and she asked her, "How did you find your own children?"