“No! no! no!” cried the woodcutter.  “The pitcher! the pitcher!  I will have the pitcher!”

“Very well then, take, the pitcher,” they sadly answered, “and never let us see your face again!”

So Subha Datta took the pitcher, carrying it very, very carefully, lest he should drop it and break it before he got home.  He did not think at all of what a cruel thing it was to take it away from the fairies, and leave them either to starve or to seek for food for themselves.  The poor fairies watched him till he was out of sight, and then they began to weep and wring their hands.  “He might at least have waited whilst we got some food out for a few days,” one of them said.  “He was too selfish to think of that,” said another.  “Come, let us forget all about him and go and look for some fruit.”

So they all left off crying and went away hand in hand.  Fairies do not want very much to eat.  They can live on fruit and dew, and they never let anything make them sad for long at a time.  They go out of this story now, but you need not be unhappy about them, because you may be very sure that they got no real harm from their generosity to Subha Datta in letting him take the pitcher.

19.  Do you think the woodcutter was wrong to ask for the pitcher?

20.  What would have been the best thing for Subha Datta to ask for, if he had decided to let the fairies keep their pitcher?

CHAPTER XI

You can just imagine what a surprise it was to Subha Datta’s wife and children when they saw him coming along the path leading to his home.  He did not bring the pitcher with him, but had hidden it in a hollow tree in the wood near his cottage, for he did not mean any one to know that he had it.  He told his wife that he had lost his way in the forest, and had been afraid he would never see her or his children again, but he said nothing 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 work 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 fall 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.”