ded 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, "why 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
be influenced by the first Ranee, and also desire my death. Let me
rather be poor like you, but safe from danger."

Then her mother cried, "Oh, what a stupid woman I am! The Rajah one
day came seeking you here, but I and your father and brothers drove
him away, for we did not know you were indeed the lost Ranee."

As she spoke these words a sound of horses' hoofs was heard in the
distance, and the Rajah himself appeared, having heard the good news
of Surya Bai's return from her old attendant.

It is impossible to tell the joy of the Rajah at finding his long-lost
wife, but it was not greater than Surya Bai's at being restored to her
husband.

Then the Rajah turned to the old Milkwoman, and said "Old woman, you
did not tell me true, for it was indeed my wife who was in your hut."

"Yes, Protector of the Poor," answered the old Milkwoman, "but it was
also my daughter." Then they told him how Surya Bai was the
Milkwoman's child.

At hearing this the Rajah commanded them all to return with him to the
palace. He gave Surya Bai's father a village and, ennobled the family;
and he said to Surya Bai's old attendant, "For the good service you
have done you shall be palace housekeeper," and he gave her great
riches; adding, "I can never repay the debt I owe you, nor make you
sufficient recompense for having caused you to be unjustly cast into
prison." But she replied, "Sire, even in your anger you were
temperate; if you had caused me to be put to death, as some would have
done, none of this good might have come upon you; it is yourself you
have to thank."

The wicked first Ranee was cast, for the rest of her life, into the
prison in which the old attendant had been thrown; but Surya Bai lived
happily with her husband the rest of her days; and in memory of her
adventures, he planted round their palace a hedge of sunflowers and a
grove of mango trees.

_The Storks and the Night Owl_

Chasid, Caliph of Bagdad, which, by the way, is on the river Tigris,
and was long,