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Coora was very much disappointed, and the big tears stood in her eyes. But she only said, "Do you promise that I may help plant the rice, really and truly?" And he called back over his shoulder, "I promise!" At last the fallen timber was burned away, and the ground was ready for planting. One morning Coora saw her father and mother making ready to go out together.
But even while she spoke the unkind parents were gone. Then Coora fell to weeping most sorely, for she knew that she could not trust the word of her father and mother; and that is a most terrible thing. At last she rose and wiped away the tears and looked about the little cottage where she had been patient through so many disappointments. And she said to herself, "I can bear it no longer.
It is not right that I should be made to suffer like this when a little thing would make me so happy. I must see the rice field; I will go to-day." Coora tidied the cottage, putting everything in its place and making it look as beautiful as she could.
Again from the tree they heard a sweet voice calling, "Mother, O Mother, I have left my earrings and bracelets behind the door and my little sister in the hammock. Good-by, Coo-o-o-ra!" As she spoke her own name Coora's voice warbled and crooned into the soft coo of a Ground-Pigeon's note, and her parents glancing up saw that this bird must be their child, their Coora, magically changed.
Now Coora had learned a little magic from a witch, just enough magic to serve her turn. She went out and picked two palm leaves which she fastened on her shoulders and changed herself into a bird, a bright, beautiful Ground-Pigeon, with many-colored metallic feathers. But the necklace still made a band about her pretty little neck, as you may see on every Ground-Pigeon to this day.
They dwelt very happily together, until one day Coora's father decided to clear the ground on the edge of the forest and have a rice plantation, as many of his neighbors were doing. So one morning early after breakfast he started out with his axe on his shoulder to cut down the trees and make a clearing. "O Father, let me go with you!" begged Coora.
"Oh, where are you going, Father and Mother?" she asked. "We go to the planting of the rice," answered her father, slinging a big bag over his shoulder. "But you promised that I should go with you when that time came?" cried Coora wistfully. "Please, please may I not be your little helper?" "No, no, Coora," answered her mother impatiently. "Do not tease us so.
When Coora heard this she jumped up and down on her little bare brown feet until her anklets tinkled, and cried, "O Father! Now I may go with you to the clearing, may I not? For so you promised." But again her father shook his head and said, "No, Coora, not yet. You must wait until the fallen timber has been burned off. Then you shall go with your mother and me to the planting of the rice."
There she found the baby in the hammock and the bracelets and earrings in a shining heap behind the door, as the voice had said, but there was no Coora anywhere. Surprised and anxious, once more the mother ran back to the plantation. "Coora is gone, husband!" she cried. "It must have been her own voice which we heard just now. Hark! She speaks again!"
"I promise," said the mother, not looking her in the eyes; and the parents went away through the forest to plant the rice. Time went by until the rice had grown tall and was ready for the harvest. Now Coora heard her parents talking of the matter, and she was very gay, for now she expected a happy, happy day. She dressed herself and made ready to go to the harvesting, as her parents had promised.
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