Page:Swahili tales.djvu/61

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SULTAN DARAI.
41

may put on her good clothes, that you may spread for her a good bed, that you may amuse her with good amusements, she is your mother, she is your father, she is your husband, she is your friend, she is your daughter. Well then, I beg of you, take great care of the child."

And the man went away, and reached his wife's house. His wife had got news—your husband has bought a concubine, and has put her in the house of his deceased wife. So the woman said, "If he comes to this house he does not come in, he shall go back to his concubine there where he has put her, or we will go to the Sheikh at once, and he shall divorce me; I don't want him for a husband any longer. Ah! when a husband buys a concubine, what does he want more with me?"

Just then the man came, and the woman took one leg here and one there, and stretched herself across the door, waiting for her husband, that when he came he might find no way to get inside. And she stretched both her hands across the doorway.

When her husband appeared she said, "Go back, go back; stop coming to my house; don't come here. Go back where you have bought (your) concubine, the house where you have put her, and stay there; see there the roof of the house, don't come to my door."

"Oh! Woman, are you mad, not to wait for me first and ask about it? Pa! and you fly at me. Call me privately into the house and ask me; you stay here in the doorway, a leg here, a leg there, a hand here, a hand there, you have filled up the doorway; all the people as they pass see you standing in this way in the door; are you not ashamed your own self?"

"I don't want your talk to-day; go back yonder there, go back yonder there, don't come into my house."

"O, my mistress, I beg of you let me say three words with you."