about the fairies. When his wife asked him how he had got food, he told her a long story about the fruits he had found, and she believed all he said, and determined to make up to him now for all she thought he had suffered. When she called the little girls to come and help her get a nice meal for their father, Subha Datta said: “Oh, don’t bother about that! I’ve brought something back with me.
I’ll go and fetch it, but no one is to come with me.” Subha Datta’s wife was sorely disappointed at this, because she loved her husband so much that it was a joy to her to cook for him. The children too wanted, of course, to go with their father, but he ordered them to stop where they were. He seized a big basket which was full of fuel for the fire, tumbled all the wood in it on the floor, and went off alone to the pitcher. Very soon he was back again with his basket full of all sorts of good things, the very names of which his wife and children had no idea of.
“There!” he cried; “what do you think of that? Am I not a clever father to have found all that in the forest? Those are the ‘fruits’ I meant when I told Mother about them.” . What would you have thought about this wonderful supply of food, if you had been one of the woodcutter’s children?
. Was it a good thing for those children to have all this food without working for it? If not, why was it not a good thing? CHAPTER XII Life was now, of course, completely changed for the family in the forest.
Subha Datta no longer went to cut wood to be sold, and the boys also left off doing so. Every day their father fetched food for them all, and the greatest desire of each one of the family was to find out where it came from. They never could do so, for Unit- - - - -