'The birds that took the apes to teaching,
Lost eggs and nests in pay for preaching.'

'How did that befall?' asked the King.

The Crane related:--


THE STORY OF THE WEAVER-BIRDS AND THE MONKEYS

"In a nullah that leads down to the Nerbudda river there stood a large
silk-cotton tree, where a colony of weaver-birds had built their hanging
nests, and lived snugly in them, whatever the weather. It was in the
rainy season, when the heavens are overlaid with clouds like
indigo-sheets, and a tremendous storm of water was falling. The birds
looked out from their nests, and saw some monkeys, shivering and starved
with the cold, standing under a tree. 'Twit! twit! you Monkeys,' they
began to chirrup. 'Listen to us!--

'With beaks we built these nests, of fibres scattered;
You that have hands and feet, build, or be spattered.'

On hearing that the Monkeys were by no means pleased. 'Ho! ho!' said
they, 'the Birds in their snug nests are jeering at us; wait till the
rain is over,' Accordingly, so soon as the weather mended, the Monkeys
climbed into the tree, and broke all the birds' eggs and demolished
every nest. I ought to have known better,' concluded the Crane, 'than to
have wasted my suggestions on King Jewel-plume's creatures.'