close to the palace gate. The Panch-Phul Ranee took her son by the one hand and her husband by the other, and walking to meet her father, said, 'Father, I have come to see you again. This is my husband who died, and this boy is my son.' Then all the land was glad to see the Panch-Phul Ranee back, and the people said, 'Our Princess is the most beautiful Princess in the world, and her husband is as handsome as she is, and her son is a fair boy; we will that they should always live among us and reign over us.'
When they had rested a little, the Panch-Phul Ranee told her father and mother the story of all her adventures from the time she and her husband were left in the palkees in the jungle. And when they had heard it, her father said to the Rajah her husband, 'You must never go away again; for see, I have no son but you. You and your son must reign here after me. And behold, all this great kingdom will I now give you, if you will only stay with us; for I am old and weary of governing the land.'
But the Rajah answered, 'I must return once again to my own country, and then I will stay with you as long as I live.'
So leaving the Panch-Phul Ranee and her son with the old Rajah and Ranee, he mounted his parrots and once more returned to his father's land. And when he had reached it, he said to his mother, 'Mother, my father-in-law has given me a kingdom ten thousand times larger than this. So I have but returned to bid you farewell, and fetch my first wife, and then I must go back to live in that other land.' She answered, 'Very well; so you are happy anywhere, I am happy too.'
He then said to his half-brother, 'Brother, my father-in-law has given me all the Panch-Phul Ranee's country, which is very far away; therefore I give up to you the half of this kingdom that my father gave to me.' Then bidding his father farewell, he took the Carpenter's daughter back with him (riding through the air on two of the wooden parrots and followed by the rest) to the Panch-Phul Ranee's country, and there he, and his two wives, and his son, lived very happily all their mortal days.
