Page:Wonder Tales from Tibet.djvu/67

Rh with all her heart. She wandered away from her gay young companions and stood watching the stranger from a distance and feeling very sorrowful.

"What ails you, my girl?" a thin, cracked voice suddenly said in her ear, and looking around she saw a little old woman, very bent and aged, and with a shrewd, wrinkled face. "What ails you?" she repeated, tapping the ground with her staff. And because Ananda did not seem to be able to do otherwise, she told her frankly the whole thing.

"Alas, good mother," she said, "I have fallen in love with yonder princely stranger!"

"And why should that make you unhappy?" said the old woman. "Why should you not hope to marry him as well as any other; you are a pretty wench, to be sure!"

"I am already married to the white bird," said Ananda, with a sigh.

"That is as it should be, my dear! That