Page:Tales of the Punjab.pdf/243

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.

THE BARBER'S CLEVER WIFE 221

he was bid, and going to the palace, begged of the King to give him something.

‘Something?’ asked the King ; ‘what thing?’

'Now the barber's wife had not mentioned anything in particular, and the barber was far too addle-pated to think of anything by himself, so he answered cautiously, ‘Oh, something !’

‘Will a piece of land do?’ said the King.

Whereupon the lazy barber, glad to be helped out of the difficulty, remarked that perhaps a piece of land would do as well as anything else.

Then the King ordered a piece of waste, outside the city, should be given to the barber, who went home quite satisfied.

‘Well! what did you get?’ asked the clever wife, who was waiting impatiently for his return, ‘ Give it me quick, that I may go and buy bread !”

And you may imagine how she scolded when she found he had only got a piece of waste land.

‘ But land is land!’ remonstrated the barber; ‘it can't run away, so we must always have something now !?

‘Was there ever such a dunderhead?’ raged the clever wife. ‘What good is ground unless we can till it? and where are we to get bullocks and ploughs ?’

But being, as we have said, an exceedingly clever person, she set her wits to work, and soon thought of a plan whereby to make the best of a bad bargain.

She took her husband with her, and set off to the picee of waste land; then, bidding her husband imitate her, she began walking about the field, and peering anxiously into the ground. But when any-

This article is issued from Wikisource. The text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 unless otherwise noted. Additional terms may apply for the media files.