Page:Deccan Nursery Tales.djvu/147

Rh better go and pay them a visit and leave your eldest boy behind. I shall look after him here." The daughter-in-law consented and went to visit her parents, leaving her son behind. The king waited for a favourable day and then bathed and anointed his grandson. He gave a feast in his honour and covered his body with costly jewelry. He then took him into the middle of the pond and made him lie down on a bed and told him not to stir. The water-goddesses were pleased, and a great mass of water suddenly rushed into the tank, and it was filled right up to the brink. After a time the daughter-in-law came back from her father's house and brought her brother with her. They asked where her son was, but they could get no information. Whenever they asked the king, he did nothing but say how the water had come into the tank, and what a beautiful tank it was, and how happy it would make all the villagers. At last the daughter-in-law guessed what had happened, and when the seventh day of the bright half of the month of Shravan, or August, came round, she and her brother went to the edge of the tank and began to worship the water-goddesses. She took a Rh