Page:Old Deccan Days.djvu/182

 140 have pity on us, and give us shelter, for the wind blows, and the rain beats, and the prickly pear hedge thorns stick into our eyes.' The Sparrow replied, 'I'm washing the dishes, I cannot let you in now, come again presently.' The Crows waited a while and then called out, 'Sparrow, Sparrow, have pity on us, and give us shelter, for the wind blows, and the rain beats, and the prickly pear hedge thorns stick into our eyes.' But the Sparrow would not let them in, she only answered, 'I'm sweeping the floor, I cannot let you in now, come again presently.' Next time the Crows came and cried, 'Sparrow, Sparrow, have pity on us, and give us shelter, for the wind blows, and the rain beats, and the prickly pear hedge thorns stick into our eyes'—she answered, 'I'm making the beds, I cannot let you in now, come again presently.' So, on one pretence or another, she refused to help the poor birds. At last, when she and her children had had their dinner, and she had prepared and put away the dinner for next day, and had put all the children to bed and gone to bed herself, she cried to the Crows, 'You may come in now, and take shelter for the night.' The Crows came in, but they were very vexed at having been kept out so long in the wind and the rain, and when the Sparrow and all her family were asleep, the one said to the other, 'This selfish Sparrow had no pity on us, she gave us no dinner, and would not let us in, till she and all her children were comfortably in bed; let us punish her.' So the two Crows took all the nice dinner the Sparrow had prepared for herself and her children to eat next day, and flew away with it.