When the three slaves went and told their mistress what the sultan had done, and how all the people were weeping, she answered:
‘I too have eaten no food, neither have I drunk water, since the day the gazelle died. I have not spoken, and I have not laughed.’
The sultan took the gazelle and buried it, and ordered the people to wear mourning for it, so there was great mourning throughout the city.
Now after the days of mourning were at an end, the wife was sleeping at her husband’s side, and in her sleep she dreamed that she was once more in her father’s house, and when she woke up it was no dream.
And the man dreamed that he was on the dust-heap, scratching. And when he woke, behold! that also was no dream, but the truth.
(Swahili Tales.)
HOW A FISH SWAM IN THE AIR AND A HARE IN THE WATER.
Once upon a time an old man and his wife lived together in a little village. They might have been happy if only the old woman had had the sense to hold her tongue at proper times. But anything which might happen indoors, or any bit of news which her husband might bring in when he had been anywhere, had to be told at once to the whole village, and these tales were repeated and altered till it often happened that much mischief was made, and the old man’s back paid for it.
One day, he drove to the forest. When he reached the edge of it he got out of his cart and walked beside it. Suddenly he stepped on such a soft spot that his foot sank in the earth.