The Ranee was very much troubled when she heard this, for if it were true, as she thought it might be, she feared the Rajah would hear about it and inquire into the matter. “What shall I do?” she asked the nurse.
“Send out and have the ground dug over and filled in,” the nurse replied. “In this way, if any of the children are hidden there, they will be covered over and smothered, and you will also kill the rats that have been harboring them.”
The Ranee at once sent for workmen and bade them go out to the rat holes and dig and fill them in, and the children and the rats would certainly have been smothered just as the nurse had planned, only luckily the old mother rat was hiding near by and overheard what was said. She at once hastened home and told her friends what was going to happen, and they all made their escape before the workmen arrived. She also took the children out of the hole and hid them under the steps that led down into an old unused well. There were twenty-one steps, and she hid one child under each step. She told them not to utter a sound whatever happened, and then she and her friends ran away and left them.
Presently the workmen came with their tools and began to fill in the rat holes. The little daughter of the head workman had come with him, and while he and his fellows were at work the little girl amused herself by running up and down the steps into the well. Every time she trod upon a step it pinched the child who lay under it. The little boys made no sound when they were pinched, but lay as still as stones, but every time the child trod on the step under which the Princess lay she sighed, and the third time she felt the pinch she cried out, “Have pity on me and tread more lightly. I too am a little girl like you!”
The workman’s daughter was very much frightened when she heard the voice. She ran to her father and told him the steps had spoken to her.
The workman thought this a strange thing. He at once went to the old Ranee and told her he dared no longer work near the well, for he believed a witch or a demon lived there under the steps; and he repeated what his little daughter had told him.
The wicked nurse was with the Ranee when the workman came to her. As soon as he had gone, the nurse said: “I am sure some of those children must still be alive. They must have escaped from the rat holes and be hiding under the steps. If we send out there we will probably find them.”
The Ranee was frightened at the thought they might still be alive. She ordered some servants to come with her, and she and the nurse went out to look for the children.
But when the little girl had cried out the little boys were afraid some harm might follow, and prayed that they might be changed into trees, so that if any one came to search for them they might not find them.
Their prayers were answered. The twenty little boys were changed into twenty little banyan trees that stood in a circle, and the little girl was changed into a rose-bush that stood in the midst of the circle and was full of red and white roses.