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go back to the same Nymphand tell her to give you another spoon,’ the people roared impatiently.
    ‘I am sorry, but the Nymph has already warned me not to come back to her for anything again!’ Ajao explained.
    ‘Don’t deceive or trick us, Ajao!’ the king warned Ajao. ‘Go back to her and, I believe, she will give you another spoon if you show her the split one. But if you refuse to go back to her, it means you disobey my order. So for that you will be beheaded!’ Thus the king forced Ajao to go back.
    ‘Oh, my head!’ Ajao exclaimed, beginning to blame himself as he started to return to the Nymph reluctantly. ‘If I had known, I should not have told the king anything about the wooden spoon. Instead, I should have been using it secretly for my family and myself.’
    When he got to the Nymph, he showed her the split spoon and he explained to her how the people had split it carelessly.
    ‘Oh, is that how you are, the son of man? All right, I will teach all of you sense today. Take this long whip, and it will serve you satisfactorily even better than the wooden spoon!’ With great annoyance, the Nymph gave the whip to Ajao.
    ‘But this is a whip,’ Ajao said with a doubtful mind. ‘And as far as I understand, the only work of a whip is flogging people.’
    ‘No, this whip is not meant so in this case,’ the Nymph explained indirectly. ‘It can also produce a lovely music to which all of you will dance merrily, and none of you will say goodbye to one another when leaving your assembly ground. Goodbye, son of man.’
    Then Ajao thanked her and left in confusion. But he went to his own house first, instead of going to the king and the people. He gathered his family hastily in the room, as they felt all near to dying from hunger. He commanded the whip: ‘Do your work now, whip.’
    Ajao had hardly commanded the whip when it began toflog him and his family. When it had flogged them severely for nearly one hour, then it stopped flogging them.
    ‘Yes,’ Ajao said with grief within himself, ‘as the people, the king and his chiefs enjoyed the delicious food and drinks which the wooden spoon supplied yesterday, so they will share the punishment which this whip supplies instead of food and drink!’
    Then immediately Ajao took the whip from the floor and went to the assembly ground. The hungry people, the king, and the chiefs were very happy when he returned to them as early as they wanted him to.
    Ajao gave the whip to the king. He told him to ask it to do its work, and after that he hastily bolted away.
    The king had hardly asked the whip to do its work when it began to flog him and his chiefs and the people. The whip flogged them so severely that not one of them could remember how he or she managed to leave there, and, as the king was running away for his life, his crown fell off his head – but he was unable to wait and take it back.
    Thus the whip taught all of the town not to be careless next time.
    A few days later, after the king saw that the people had rested their minds, he invited Ajao to his palace. Angrily, he asked Ajao, ‘Why did you bring the cruel whip instead of the kindly wooden spoon?’
    ‘Well, you see, that was the right thing that the Nymph gave to me instead of the wooden spoon, and that meant she taught us a lesson: that we must take good care of whatever might be given to us,’ Ajao explained calmly.
    ‘Yes, of course, if we were not careless, the wooden spoon would still be serving us – especially at this time when the great famine continues to besiege our town,’ the king remarked quietly, when he realized their mistake.

Don’t Pay Bad for Bad
    Dola and Babi were good friends in their days. Both were young ladies, and they had loved each other heartily from when they were children. They always wore the same kind of dress, and they went together everywhere in their village , and to other villages as well. They did everything together, so much so that anyone who did not know