From tree to tree about the rice plantation the distracted parents pursued the Pigeon; but it was in vain to try to capture her. Ever she escaped them when they seemed about to lay hands upon her soft feathers. After following her flight for many miles they were obliged to return home, sad and sorry and repentant. For they knew now that it was their own unkindness and their broken promises which had driven their daughter away from the cottage, never to return.
The beautiful Ground-Pigeon still lingers near the rice plantations which she had so longed to visit. Still she plaintively calls her name, and still she wears the necklace about her pretty little neck. And the little Malay maidens love her very dearly because she was once a girl like them.
SISTER HEN AND THE CROCODILE
HE Crocodile is one of the hungriest bodies that ever lived. When he is looking for a dinner he will eat almost anything that comes within reach. Sometimes the greedy fellow swallows great stones and chunks of wood, in his hurry mistaking them for something more digestible. And when he is smacking his great jaws over his food he makes such a greedy, terrible noise that the other animals steal away nervously and hide until it shall be Master Crocodile's sleepy-time. He is too lazy to waddle in search of a dinner far from the river where he lives. But any animal or even a man-swimmer had best be careful how he ventures into the water near the Crocodile's haunts. For what seems to be a greenish-brown, knobby log of wood floating on the water, has little bright eyes which are on the lookout for anything which moves. And below the water two great jaws are ready to open and swallow in the prey of Mr. Hungry-Mouth.
But no matter how hungry the Crocodile may be, he will not touch the Hen, even if she should venture into his very jaws; at least, that is what the Black Men of the Congo River will tell you. And surely, as they are the nearest neighbors of the big reptile they ought to know if any one does. Now this is the story which they tell to explain why the Crocodile will not eat the Hen.
Once upon a time there was a Hen, a common, plump, clucky mother Hen, who used every day to go down to the river and pick up bits of food on the moist banks, where luscious insects were many. She did not know that this Congo River was the home of the Crocodile, the biggest, fiercest, scaliest, hungriest Crocodile in all Africa. But one day when she went down to the water as usual she hopped out onto what looked like a mossy log, saying to herself:—