m that that is a point which they have to decide; and
then they will be able to do nothing and will go away." The younger
brother agreed to this and when the villagers came and asked what the
quarrel was about he said, "Don't you know what the quarrel was? That
was the very matter I wanted you to decide; if you don't know, how
can you judge about it?" And this answer he repeated to all their
questioning; then they got angry and said that he was mocking them;
and they declined to give any decision, but said that the brothers
must give them dinner as they had detained them so long; but the
brothers flatly declined to do so as no decision had been given,
and the villagers went away grumbling, while the brothers bought a
pig with the money they had saved and had a jolly feast and as they
ate the elder brother said: "See what a good plan mine was; but for
it we should now have been feasting others at our expense."

CXXXI. The Three Fools.

Once upon a time three men were sitting at the foot of a tamarind
tree and a stranger came up to them with a bunch of plantains on his
shoulder and he put the plantains on the ground in front of them and
bowed and went away. Thereupon the three men began to quarrel as to
who was to have the plantains; each said that they were his because
it was to him that the man had bowed. So they started calling each
other "Fool" and after quarrelling for some time one said "Well, yes,
I admit that I am a great fool" and the other two asked why he thought
himself a fool and he said "Well one day my wife went to the jungle
with the other village women to get firewood and left our baby in my
charge; as she was a long time coming back the child became hungry
and began to cry; I walked him about but he would not stop crying;
I tried to feed him with rice and with rice water and with _Gur_
and with cow's milk but he would not eat or stop crying; I was in
despair when his mother came back and took him up and gave him the
breast and the child was quiet at once.

Seeing this I said to my wife "Human milk must be sweeter than
anything else." My wife said "Who can say whether it is nice; we
all drink it when we are infants; but when we grow up we cannot say
what it is like." Then I said that I would try what it was like and I
sucked her breast and found that it was much sweeter than cow's milk;
after that I formed the habit and used to drink her milk every day;
and as I left none for the child it died so