Page:The Autobiography of an Indian Princess.djvu/37

Rh anything which her conscience told her was wrong. She was a charming story-teller, and would often tell us fairy tales when we were in bed. We loved these stories and never wearied of listening to them; some of them I have collected together in a little volume, and one I will include here.

A Maharajah had two wives, and he loved the second far more than the first. Yet the first wife was lovely, gentle, unselfish, and kind-hearted, and the second was just the reverse; she was haughty, vain, ill-tempered, and very jealous of the first wife. The first wife had a baby boy, the heir, to whom the Maharajah was very devoted, and much to the annoyance of the second wife he often played with the baby, who was just beginning to crawl. One day, while he was playing with the child, he sang to him over and over again: "I love this face with its toothless smile," and the second wife hearing, could not get the expression out of her head, "toothless smile." The next time the Maharajah came to see the second wife he found her crawling on the floor, and thought she had gone mad. He asked her what she was doing, and when she opened her mouth to answer he saw, to his horror and disgust, that she had no teeth. "What have you done to yourself?" he asked angrily. She answered him with a hideous smile, " Did you not say to your baby that you loved the face with a toothless smile?" With a furious look he said, "Begone, you are no longer my wife. Your insane jealousy banishes