A Bottle of Dew: the ending

This is how 'A Bottle of Dew' ends, told in short.

Rama Natha went home and talked to his wife. Then he began to clean his big fields, which had been lying empty for years. He planted rows and rows of banana plants and looked after them carefully. Every winter he collected the dew from their leaves.

Madhumati helped in her own way. She did not collect the dew, because the sage had said Rama Natha must do that himself. She gathered the bananas, took them to the market and got a good price for them. Year after year he planted more, until they had a huge banana plantation. At the end of six years, he had his five litres of dew at last.

Now see what happened, in this order. First, Rama Natha carefully gave the bottle to the sage. Next, the sage smiled and muttered something over it, and gave it back. Then Rama Natha sprinkled a few drops on a copper vessel and waited for it to turn to gold. Nothing happened! Rama Natha was angry. He said this was cheating, and that he had wasted six precious years.

But the sage only smiled and called Madhumati. She came with a big box. When she opened it, it was full of gold coins! The sage explained that there is no potion that turns things into gold. Rama Natha had worked hard on his land, and Madhumati had sold the bananas at the market. Their hard work, not magic, had made this wealth.

Why the trick? The sage said Rama Natha would not have listened if he had been told the truth at the start. So he gave him a job that would take years, knowing the work itself would make them rich.

Rama Natha understood, and from that day he worked even harder on his plantation. The moral of the story is hard work and perseverance: keep working, and do not give up.