“Oh, you are most kind!” cried the girl. “Give them to me, I beg, and I will hasten home and trouble you no longer!”
“Not so fast! Not so fast!” replied the bird. “Wait and hear my conditions. Your sisters refused them with scorn and preferred to endure all the ill-treatment and abuse at home rather than to consider for a moment what I proposed.”
“They must be hard conditions indeed,” said Ananda, “to make me refuse them and go home goatless to my angry father! Tell me, good bird—what are they?”
“This is the bargain I propose,” said the white bird slowly. “If you will marry me and live in luxury here, in my palace cave, I will send all the goats straightway back to your father. Moreover, you shall have all that your heart can desire, in so far as wealth can give it. Come, now! I will let you have fifteen minutes in which [[35]]to consider. Sit down upon that divan yonder, and when your mind is made up, speak and I will listen.” Then the white bird began busily pecking grains of food from the cup in his cage, as if he had nothing further to say on the subject.
Slowly Ananda walked over to the divan and sat down. “If I go home without the goat,” she reasoned with herself, “my father will nigh kill me in his anger—and yet, to marry a white bird, truly that would be a very sorry adventure. But (looking around the brightly lighted room) life at home is poor and dull, and here would be much to amuse and interest me. And even a white bird might prove a good companion, if I had no other.” She arose and walked back to the cage with a decided step.
“I will marry you!” said she to the white bird.
“Good!” said he, and rising on his perch, fluttered his wings. Immediately there appeared before Ananda a table [[36]]spread with a fine cloth and having upon it the best supper her eyes had ever looked on.
“Sit down and eat,” continued the white bird, “for you must be hungry. The goats are even now on their way homeward and will find your father’s pen unguided, with the rest of the flock, to-night.”
So Ananda married the white bird and lived in the palace cave, and for a long time her days were full of wonder and delight. There seemed no end to the treasures around her, and she had but to form a wish in her mind to have it straightway granted. But after awhile she began to grow lonely. Every morning the white bird disappeared (whither, she never knew), and all day long she must remain by herself in the great vaulted room. In the evening the white bird would return, but after all, he was poor company compared with her two sisters, and she began to regret what she had done and long to be at home again. The white bird brought [[37]]her news of the outside world and tried to cheer her by talk and gossip, and one time he told her of a fair which was to be held next day in a near-by village. Ananda sighed deeply as he told of it.
“How I should love to go to that fair!” said she. “It is so long since I have seen any of my kind.”