Many days of poverty and hunger visited that household before the woman remembered the pretty stone found in the fish; but at last she thought of it, and took it to a Bunniah, who, as soon as he set eyes upon it, said: “Give me that, and I will give you as much as you can carry away of ghee and food and oil, not only to-day, but for many days, if you will come to my shop.”
The foolish woman parted with her treasure, not knowing that it was a pearl of great value, and returned home laden with good things.
The Bunniah chuckled with delight. He was crafty, like all Bunniahs, and, you may depend, never kept his promise: such was the foolishness of the woman, and such the cunning and greed of the man.
THE BUNNIAH’S GHOST
Far away in a valley in the Himalayan mountains lies a little village, where once lived a good man who had his home beside a field in which grew a beautiful mulberry tree—so big and so beautiful that it was the wonder of the country round.
Hundreds of people were wont to gather together beneath it, and the poor carried away basket loads of its fruit. Thus it became a meeting place where a mela, or fair, was held when the fruit season was on.
Now the fame of it reached a certain Rajah who had rented out the land, and one day he came with all his retinue to see it.
“There is no such tree in the Royal Gardens,” said the Grand Vizier.
“It is not meet that a subject should possess what the Rajah hath not,” added the Prime Minister.