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PAGE 2

Panwpatti Rani
by [?]

The prince got up directly, and told his father and mother he was going for a few days to eat the air of another country. At first they forbad his going; but then they reflected that he had been very ill, and that perhaps the air of another country might make him well; so at last they consented. The prince and his friend had two horses saddled and bridled, and set off together.

At the end of a month they arrived in a country where they asked (as they had asked in every other country through which they had ridden), “What is the name of this country?” “Karnátak” [the Carnatic]. “What is your Rájá’s name?” “Rájá Dánt.” Then the two friends were glad. They stopped at an old woman’s house, and said to her, “Let us stay with you for a few days. We are men from another country and do not know where to go in this place.” The old woman said, “You may stay with me if you like. I live all alone, and there is plenty of room for you.”

After two or three days the kotwál’s son said to the old woman, “Has your Rájá a daughter?” “Yes,” she answered; “he has a daughter; her name is Pánwpattí Rání.” “Can you go to see her?” asked the kotwál’s son. “Yes,” she said, “I can go to see her. I was her nurse, and she drank my milk. It is the Rájá who gives me my house, and my food, and clothes–everything that I have.” “Then go and see her,” said the kotwál’s son, “and tell her that the prince whom she called to her at the fair has come.”

The old woman went up to the palace, and saw the princess. After they had talked together for some time, she said to the little Rání, “The prince you called to you at the fair is come.” “Good,” she said; “tell him to come to see me to-night at twelve o’clock. He is not to come in through the door, but through the window.” (This she said because she did not want her father to know that the prince had come, until she had made up her mind whether she would marry him.)

The old woman went home and told the kotwál’s son what the Princess Pánwpattí said. That night the prince went to see her, and every night for three or four nights he went to talk with her for an hour. Then she told her mother she wished to be married, and her mother told her father. Her father asked whom she wished to marry, and she said, “The Rájá’s son who lives in my nurse’s house.” Her father said she might marry him if she liked; so the wedding was held. The kotwál’s son went to the wedding, and then returned to the old woman’s house; but the prince lived in the Rájá’s palace.

Here he stayed for a month, and all that time he never saw his friend. At last he began to fret for him, and was very unhappy. “What makes you so sad?” said Pánwpattí Rání. “I am sad because I have not seen my friend for a whole month,” answered her husband. “I must go and see him.” “Yes, go and see him,” said his wife. The Rájá’s son went to the old woman’s house, and there he stayed a week, for he was so glad to see the kotwál’s son. Then he returned to his wife. Now she thought he would only have been away a day, and was very angry at his having stayed so long from her. “How could you leave me for a whole week?” she said to him. “I had not seen my friend for a month,” he answered. Pánwpattí Rání did not let her husband see how angry she was; but in her heart she thought, “I am sure he loves his friend best.”