Page:Swahili tales.djvu/143

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SULTAN DARAI.
123

with its master. She felt pity for it, for the trouble the gazelle had suffered; such are the ways of the world.

The Sultan's wife, when she heard those words her husband was saying to the old woman, her countenance lost its light, and she was still, and tears started from her eyes, so that her husband, when he saw her tears coming from her eyes, and the light of her countenance gone, he asked her, "What is the matter with you, Sultan's daughter?" And she said, "In the world he that has not much has little, and a man's madness that is his understanding."

"Why is it mistress you say these words?"

And she said, "I am sorry for you, my husband, because of what you are doing to the gazelle. Whenever I say a good word for the gazelle, my husband, you dislike it with your understanding. I feel pity for you, my husband, that your understanding is gone."

And he said, "Why do you talk in this way to me?"

And she said, "Advice is nothing but a blessing; there are two people in a house, wife and husband; if the wife comes by a matter, let her tell her husband; if the husband comes by a matter, let him tell his wife. Advice is a blessing."

And he said, "You woman, you are mad, and your madness is manifest, and you ought to be put in fetters."

And she said, "Master, I am not mad; if I am mad, this madness is what is my understanding."

And he said, "Oh, old woman, don't listen to the mistress's talk; tell it to perish out of the way, and tell the gazelle not to make a bother; and more, not to stay down there and make itself the Sultan. I cannot get sleep here, night nor day; I cannot eat, and I cannot get water to drink, for the bother of that gazelle coming worrying me. One time some one comes, The gazelle is