XII
STRANGE FRIENDS IN TIME OF NEED
THERE was once an old woman, a widow, in very straitened circumstances. She maintained herself by husking rice for other people, and getting particles of khúd[1] as reward. But poor as she was, she was not free from being molested by a thief. Frequently he visited her house and purloined the commonest things he could get, until at length the poor woman determined to seek the protection of the king of her country. With this purpose she was on her way to the palace, when a lump of clay, seeing her approach, said, "Where are you off to, old woman?" She replied that she was going to the king to ask for a guard to protect her from a certain thief. The lump of clay said, "Take me to your house, and leave me at the threshold. I will be your guard."
The woman did as she was told, but she once again set out towards the palace, not fully depending on the assurances of the lump of clay. On the road she found an open razor. It asked her the same question as the mass of clay had done, and, according to the instructions of the razor, the woman placed it close to her first sentinel, in the passage leading into her room. Still, however, doubting the efficiency of her two self-constituted guards, she again resumed her journey. A third time she found a friend on the way, a shingi fish, noted for the sharp appendages below its head, and it advised her to put it on the steps leading into her room, in a hándi[2] full of water. When she was returning home with this new recruit, she met a bomb and a frog, and desiring to add these to the number of her protectors, she carried them also to her house, and according to their instructions, placed the
