After the marriage the family became very prosperous and their crops flourished and every one liked the bonga girl; but between her and her husband there were constant quarrels and their friends could not stop them.  One day it happened that Dukhu smacked her on the head.  Then the bonga girl began to cry and called her father-in-law and mother-in-law and said “Father, listen, the father of your grandson has turned me out, you must do your work yourselves to-day;” then she took her child on her hip and left the house; and they ran after her and begged her to return, but she would not heed; and they tried to snatch the child from her but she would not give it up, and went away and was seen no more.

LXX.  The Monkey Husband.

One very hot day some children were bathing in a pool, when a Hanuman monkey snatched up the cloth which one of the girls had left on the bank and ran up a tree with it.  When the children came out of the water and went to take up their clothes, they found one missing, and looking about, they saw the monkey in the tree with it.  They begged the Hanuman to give it back, but the monkey only said—­“I will not give it unless its owner consents to marry me.”—­Then they began to throw sticks and stones at him but he climbed to the top of the tree out of the way.

Then they ran and told the parents of the girl whose cloth had been stolen; and they called their neighbours and went with bows and arrows and threatened to shoot the monkey if he did not give up the cloth, but he still said that he would not, unless the girl would marry him.  Then they shot all their arrows at him but not one of them hit him; then the neighbours said.  “This child is fated to belong to the monkey and that is why we cannot hit him.”  Then the girl’s father and mother began to cry and sang:—­

    “Give the girl her cloth,
    Her silk cloth, monkey boy,”

and he answered

    “If she consents to marry me I will give it: 
    If she consents I will put it in her hand.”

And as he did not listen to the father and mother, her father’s younger brother and his wife sang the same song, but in vain; and then the girl herself begged for it, and thereupon the monkey let down one end of the cloth to her; and when she caught hold of it, he pulled her up into the tree, and there made her put on her cloth and ran off with her on his back.

The girl was quite willing to go with him and called out as she was carried away:  “Never mind, father and mother, I am going away.”  The Hanuman took her to a cave in the mountains and they lived on fruit,—­mangoes or jack or whatever fruit was in season.  The monkey climbed the trees and shook the fruit down; but if the girl saw by the marks of teeth that the monkey had bitten off any fruit, instead of only shaking it down, she would not eat it, and pretended that she had had enough; for she would not eat the leavings of the monkey.