Time went by until the rice had grown tall and was ready for the harvest.  Now Coora heard her parents talking of the matter, and she was very gay, for now she expected a happy, happy day.  She dressed herself and made ready to go to the harvesting, as her parents had promised.  But when she joined them, smiling joyfully, they turned upon her frowning and bade her return to the house and take care of everything until their home-coming.  Then poor little Coora burst into tears and said, “O my Father and O my Mother, I have obeyed you without a word every time you broke your promise to me.  And still you continue to put me off from day to day, when this is the thing I long to do so much that it seems as if my heart would break.  Think of it!  The clearing has been made, the timber burned, the rice planted and grown, and now it is ready for the harvest.  But I have not even seen the place where all this has happened.  O Father and Mother, why are you so unkind to me?”

“There, there!” cried her father and mother together, “do not make a fuss over so small a matter.  You cannot go to-day; but wait until the rice is gathered and it is time to tread it out.  Then we will let you help us, you may be sure.  We promise, Coora, that you shall really and truly go.”

“You promise!” echoed Coora bitterly.  “You have promised me before and nothing came of it.”  But even while she spoke the unkind parents were gone.

Then Coora fell to weeping most sorely, for she knew that she could not trust the word of her father and mother; and that is a most terrible thing.  At last she rose and wiped away the tears and looked about the little cottage where she had been patient through so many disappointments.  And she said to herself, “I can bear it no longer.  It is not right that I should be made to suffer like this when a little thing would make me so happy.  I must see the rice field; I will go to-day.”

Coora tidied the cottage, putting everything in its place and making it look as beautiful as she could.  Then she took up the little sister who had fallen asleep on the floor, and kissing her tenderly placed her in the hammock which swung from wall to wall of the hut.  Lastly Coora took off the golden bracelets and earrings and the tinkling anklets which she wore like other little Malay girls, and left them in a shining heap behind the door.  But she kept her necklace about her pretty little neck.

Now Coora had learned a little magic from a witch, just enough magic to serve her turn.  She went out and picked two palm leaves which she fastened on her shoulders and changed herself into a bird, a bright, beautiful Ground-Pigeon, with many-colored metallic feathers.  But the necklace still made a band about her pretty little neck, as you may see on every Ground-Pigeon to this day.

Coora the Ground-Pigeon fluttered away through the forest until she came to the rice plantation where her parents were at work.  She alighted on a dead tree close by them and called out, “Mother, O Mother!  I have left my earrings and bracelets behind the door and have put my little sister in the hammock.”