Then the Queen, having said, “It is not male; it is female,” made a wager. What was the wager, indeed? “Let us catch it and look. Should it be the cock I will not stay with you; I will go away somewhere or other. Should it be the hen you must give me the sovereignty,” she said. Thereupon the King said, “It is good.”
Having caught the bird they looked; when they looked the animal was the male.
Then the Queen said, “I am going now,” and she set off.
The King said, “We said it for fun, didn’t we? Are you going in that way for that little matter?”
The Queen would not [stay], “I must really go,” she said.
Thereupon the King having said, “Are you going for that? We made monkey fun.[1] Owing to it where are you to go?” said much in the way of advice. Without hearkening to it the Queen went. What was [the real reason of] it? [It was] because the royal talk was Large.
When the Queen was going, the [completion of the] ten months of her pregnancy was near; as she was going in a forest she bore a child. Carrying the infant, as she was going along a path there was a river in which the water had dried up. While she was going along the river the Prince began to cry. For the sake of stopping the crying she picked up a stone which was on the ground in the river; and having said, “Look here, son,” she stopped the crying, and taking that little stone [with her] came to another city.
Having come [there] and walked to all places, and looked about, and come to a house in which was a widow woman, she asked, “Mother, keeping this Prince for me, will you give me a little space to stay in, until the time when the Prince becomes big?”
Thereupon the old woman said, “It is good, daughter. I also am alone; because of it remain here.”
The Queen, having said, “It is good,” lived there, pounding paddy [at houses] throughout the streets; and up to the time when the Prince became big stayed there getting a living. By that time, seven years of the Prince’s age had passed.