(79)
How? Do all the brothers' wives live happily, or according to the times?
O Madam, you can't think what trouble I have. I am the chief: don't you think they will treat me as an any thing?
What all, or only one?
No, the little girl is a respectable man's daughter. She has a partiality for me, and converses with me.
Then you cultivate a friendship with her?
There is a friendship truly; but they are all bad. Therefore it is to be feared that she will be the same.
She is but a little girl. Do you trust her, and shew a little attachment to her, and she will be always at your beck.
At my beck! It is not possible to be so under me: a twig is harder than a bamboo.
Then it is as you said, she is pretty good.
Good! how good? she don't despise me very much.
Then it is well, does she manage and attend your children.
Yes, that truly. My children are almost always with her: she feeds and washes them.
The other women are murmuring and quarrelling day and night incessantly. Burning like Ravuna's funeral pile, they are always at eat your head, eat your head.
Then there is no friendship between any of them?
Almost none. What friendship? there is not even conversation with a placid countenance; nothing but abusive language.
O woman! Tell me who your husband loves best? I hear—
