Page:Swahili tales.djvu/145

Rh sick. Another time some one comes, The gazelle does not like to eat. Perish out of the way! If it likes to eat let it eat, and if it does not, let it perish ont of the way. My mother is dead, and my father is dead, and I am eating and drinking; much less that one gazelle, that I bought for an eighth, shall it be setting me up and putting me down. Go and tell the gazelle to learn how to behave itself."

The old woman went downstairs, blood was coming from it in one place, and matter in another. She went on till seeing the gazelle, she put her arms round it and took it on her lap, and said to it, "My son, the good you did is lost, there remains patience."

And it said, "Mother, my stomach is full, and my tongue is heavy, and my eyes are dazzled at what I hear." And they wept much, both the gazelle and the old woman.

And it said, "Mother, I shall die, for my soul is very full of indignation, and is very full of bitterness; and my face is ashamed, doing good to my master and he repaying me evil."

And she said, "Ah! my son, I have nothing I can say."

And it said, "Mother, of the goods that are in this house, I, one gazelle, what do I eat? He might cook for me every day half a basin full, and would my master be any the poorer? I was at the trouble of getting it, and when I am ill, to be be told that felefele is to be taken for me, which a horse would not eat, and I am to have gruel made for me. The elders said, 'He that does good like a mother.

And it said, "Go up presently and tell the master the gazelle is very ill; tell him, as we think, we think him nearer death than life."

And she went upstairs and found the master chewing And she went upstairs and found the master chewing