"AT THAT MOMENT SHE TURNED INTO A TREE"
XIV
THE POOR MAN AND HIS WIFE OF WOOD
ONCE upon a time there was a poor man who used to beg. One day he sat thinking to himself, "I am a poor man and have no wife. When I go out begging there is no one to come back to in my house or to cook my food for me whilst I am away."
So he went out to the forest and cut down a tree and carved out of it a woman of wood, and when he had finished he decorated her with jewels and necklaces of wood, and then brought her back to his house.
Then that tree turned into a woman, and he called her Mwanamizi, the child of a root, and he lived with her many days. Till one day, when that poor man had gone forth to beg, a slave girl ran out from the palace of the Sultan in search of a brand with which to light the fire.
She came and knocked at the poor man's door, and when she got no answer she entered and went into the kitchen, and there she saw a lovely woman decked out with pearls and jewels. She went running back to the Sultan and said to him, "I have just seen the most wondrously beautiful woman in the house of that beggar who lives near us."
The Sultan then ordered his soldiers, "Go to fetch the wife of the beggar, that I may see if the words of this slave are true or false."
So they went and took Mwanamizi and brought her to the palace. When the Sultan saw her he thought her very beautiful.
So he said, "This woman is too beautiful for a beggar. I will take her for my wife."