knowledge was insatiable. Her mother had never approved of her studies, and was not at all sorry that they should be brought to a conclusion; in fact, as she was eight years old, and according to the national custom of a arriageable age, she thought it was time to arrange a match for her.
In order to enter at all into the feelings of the little Jamuna, we must remember that in India women develop, both physically and mentally, earlier than they do in Europe. A girl of eight or nine is as much advanced intellectually as an English girl of twelve or fourteen, and at thirty she is already considered an old woman. This little girl, who with us would still have been in the nursery and only just able to read and write fairly, was in India looked upon as old enough to become a wife, and with her marriage all prospect of any further education would have come to an end.
We can hardly be surprised that one who had already shown such enthusiasm for study, should have felt dismayed at the idea of never being able to learn any more, and we can believe how delighted she must have been when her kind old grandmother smoothed her path for her by offering to go and live at Alibag, and to take Jamuna with her and make a home for her, so that she might continue her Sanskrit studies.
Thus the matter was arranged; though how all the
