Page:Old Deccan Days.djvu/109

Rh 'The old Eagles took me away to their home, and there I lived happily many years. They loved to bring me all the most beautiful things they could find, and at last one day they both went to fetch me a diamond ring from the Red Sea; but while they were gone, the fire went out in the nest: so I went to an old woman's hut, and got her to give me some fire; and next day (I don't know how it was), as I was opening the outer door of the cage, a sharp thing that was sticking in it ran into my hand, and I fell down senseless. 'I don't know how long I lay there, but when I came to myself I found the Eagles must have come back, and thought me dead, and gone away, for the diamond ring was on my little finger; a great many people were watching over me, and amongst them was a Rajah, who asked me to go home with him and be his wife, and he brought me to this place, and I was his Ranee. 'But his other wife, the first Ranee, hated me (for she was jealous), and desired to kill me; and one day she accomplished her purpose, by pushing me into the tank, for I was young and foolish, and disregarded the warnings of my faithful old attendant, who begged me not to go near the place. Ah! if I had only listened to her words I might have been happy still.' At this the old attendant, who had been sitting in the background, rushed forward and kissed Surya Bai's feet, crying, 'Ah, my lady! my lady! have I found you at last?' and, without staying to hear more, she ran back to the Palace to tell the Rajah the glad news. Then Surya Bai told her parents how she had not wholly died in the tank, but become a sunflower; and how the first Ranee, seeing the Rajah's fondness for the plant, had caused it to be thrown away; and then how she had risen from the ashes of the sunflower in the form of a mango tree; and how when the tree blossomed all her spirit went into the little mango flower; and she ended by saying, 'And when the flower became fruit, I know not by what irresistible impulse I was induced to throw myself into your milk-can, mother. It was my destiny, and as soon as you took me into your house, I began to recover my human form.' 'Why, then,' asked her brothers and sisters, 'do you not tell the Rajah that you are living, and that you are the Ranee Surya Bai?' 'Alas!' she answered, 'I could not do that. Who knows but that he may now be influenced by the first Ranee, and desire my death? Let me rather be poor like you, but safe from danger.'