Page:Deccan Nursery Tales.djvu/128

Rh bringing a false charge against them, and they all met together and vowed that they would be revenged on her. Some days later the king invited a guest to his house, and the same night the mice went into the little daughter-in-law's room and dragged out one of her bodices and put it across the guest's bed. Next morning the bodice was discovered in the stranger's bed, and the little daughter-in-law was utterly disgraced. Her father-in-law and all her brothers-in-law scolded her dreadfully, and at last the king drove her out of the house. Now it so happened that it had till then always been the work of the little daughter-in-law to look after the lamps in the king's palace. Every morning she used to rub them well and trim the wicks. She used to light them herself and neap the burners with sugar-candy, and on Divali Day she used to worship them and make them suitable offerings. But, directly the little daughter-in-law was driven away, none of the lamps were any longer cared for. On the next Divali Day the king was returning from a hunt, and he camped under a tree. Suddenly he saw all the lamps 96