A famished traveller arrived at chuttram, and tendered the Brahmin Woman, who kept an eating house therein, four fanams, and declaring that he was dying of hunger, begged her to give him, at once, a mouthful rise, "no bigger" said he, "than a time" meaning of course that a little would appease his hunger. The woman, taking him at his word, placed on a leaf before him a small lump of boiled rice no bigger than a lime in size. The traveller demurred to this and urged that he was not to be taken au pied de la lettre, that he spoke of the size of a lime, only by way of euphemism, and that the quantity served up was ridiculously inadequate to keep body and soul together. The woman, however, declined to give him any more food, and stoutly maintained that she had fulfilled her part of the contract. The traveller, accordingly, went up to Mariada Ramanna and sued for the recovery of his money. Mariada Ramanna sent for the woman, and asked her if it was true that she had agreed to give him boiled rice as big as a lime-and on her replying in the affirmative, he asked her if she had kept her word. In reply to this, she ran home, fetched the leaf containing the small lump of rice and exhibited it exultantly. Mariada Ramanna, however, proved " one too many" for her, and completely knocked the ground from under her feet, by decreeing that as there was not a single in it, that was as big as a lime, the woman should either supply a single grain of rice as big as the fruit, or refund the traveller his money, Hence the money went to its rightful owner, and the adage was verified that" under the tree will fall its own fruit."
