twelve children and I find food for them all. I would not kill one for
anything, not even if by so doing I could get back my wings. There is
plenty for all. Look at the emu bush how it covers itself with berries
to feed my big family. See how the grasshoppers come hopping round, so
that we can catch them and fatten on them."

"But you have only two children."

"I have twelve. I will go and bring them to show you." Dinewan ran off
to her salt bush where she had hidden her ten young ones. Soon she was
to be seen coming back. Running with her neck stretched forward, her
head thrown back with pride, and the feathers of her boobootella
swinging as she ran, booming out the while her queer throat noise, the
Dinewan song of joy, the pretty, soft-looking little ones with their
zebra-striped skins, running beside her whistling their baby Dinewan
note. When Dinewan reached the place where Goomblegubbon was, she
stopped her booing and said in a solemn tone, "Now you see my words are
true, I have twelve young ones, as I said. You can gaze at my loved
ones and think of your poor murdered children. And while you do so I
will tell you the fate of your descendants for ever. By trickery and
deceit you lost the Dinewans their wings, and now for evermore, as long
as a Dinewan has no wings, so long shall a Goomblegubbon lay only two
eggs and have only two young ones. We are quits now. You have your
wings and I my children."

And ever since that time a Dinewan, or emu, has had no wings, and a
Goomblegubbon, or bustard of the plains, has laid only two eggs in a
season.