up to view the most beautiful
babe that ever gave the sunlight a good excuse for visiting this wicked
earth. The mere sight of so much innocent beauty and happiness gave
Bimsha a shock from which it took her three weeks to recover. After that
she would sit at her window and for pure envy keep watch to see Katipah
and the child playing together--the child which was so much more
beautiful and well-behaved than her own.

As for Katipah, she was so happy now that the sorrow of waiting for her
husband's return grew small. Day by day the west wind blew softly,
and she knew that Gamma-gata was there, keeping watch over her and her
child.

Every day she would say to the little one, "Come, my plum-petal, my
wind-flower, I will send thee up to thy father that he may see how fat
thou art getting, and be proud of thee!" And going down to the shore,
she would lay the child among the strings of her kite and send it up to
where Gamma-gata blew a wide breath over sea and land. As it went she
would hear the child crow with joy at being so uplifted from earth,
and laughing to herself, she would think, "When he sees his child so
patterned after his own heart, Gamma-gata will be too proud to remain
long away from me."

When she drew the child back to her out of the sky, she covered it with
caresses, crying, "Oh, my wind-blown one, my cloudlet, my sky-blossom,
my little piece out of heaven, hast thou seen thy father, and has he
told thee that he loves me?" And the child would crow with mysterious
delight, being too young to tell anything it knew in words.

Bimsha, out of her window, watched and saw all this, not comprehending
it: and in her evil heart a wish grew up that she might by some means
put an end to all Katipah's happiness. So one day towards evening, when
Katipah, alone upon the shore, had let her kite and her little one go
up to the fleecy edges of a cloud through which the golden sunlight
was streaming, Bimsha came softly behind and with a sharp knife cut the
string by which alone the kite was held from falling.

"Oh, silly Bimsha!" cried Katipah, "what have you done that for?"

Up in air the kite made a far plunge forward, fluttered and stumbled
in its course, and came shooting headlong to earth. "Oh dear!" cried
Katipah, "it my beautiful little kite gets torn, Bimsha, that will be
your fault!"

When the kite fell, it lay unhurt on one of the soft sandhills that
ringed the bay; but no sign of the child was to be seen.