t seems as if
my heart would break. Think of it! The clearing has been made, the
timber burned, the rice planted and grown, and now it is ready for the
harvest. But I have not even seen the place where all this has
happened. O Father and Mother, why are you so unkind to me?"

"There, there!" cried her father and mother together, "do not make a
fuss over so small a matter. You cannot go to-day; but wait until the
rice is gathered and it is time to tread it out. Then we will let you
help us, you may be sure. We promise, Coora, that you shall really and
truly go."

"You promise!" echoed Coora bitterly. "You have promised me before and
nothing came of it." But even while she spoke the unkind parents were
gone.

Then Coora fell to weeping most sorely, for she knew that she could not
trust the word of her father and mother; and that is a most terrible
thing. At last she rose and wiped away the tears and looked about the
little cottage where she had been patient through so many
disappointments. And she said to herself, "I can bear it no longer. It
is not right that I should be made to suffer like this when a little
thing would make me so happy. I must see the rice field; I will go
to-day."

Coora tidied the cottage, putting everything in its place and making it
look as beautiful as she could. Then she took up the little sister who
had fallen asleep on the floor, and kissing her tenderly placed her in
the hammock which swung from wall to wall of the hut. Lastly Coora took
off the golden bracelets and earrings and the tinkling anklets which she
wore like other little Malay girls, and left them in a shining heap
behind the door. But she kept her necklace about her pretty little neck.

Now Coora had learned a little magic from a witch, just enough magic to
serve her turn. She went out and picked two palm leaves which she
fastened on her shoulders and changed herself into a bird, a bright,
beautiful Ground-Pigeon, with many-colored metallic feathers. But the
necklace still made a band about her pretty little neck, as you may see
on every Ground-Pigeon to this day.

Coora the Ground-Pigeon fluttered away through the forest until she came
to the rice plantation where her parents were at work. She alighted on a
dead tree close by them and called out, "Mother, O Mother! I have left
my earrings and bracelets behind the door and have put my little sister
in the hammock."

Astonished at these words her mother looked up, but saw n