started back, saying: "Good heavens! what next? what, that fat unwieldy old man going to marry again! Alas, alas! And such an excellent housewife as he has already, a chaste divinity, as pure as Lakshmi! What, he must go and tie a co-wife to her neck! It is a crying shame! Why, there is a really nothing that men will not do!" The barber was dumbfounded by this eloquent outburst, but taking no notice of what his wife was saying, stuck his hat of plaited leaves on his head and went off.
That day was a very cloudy one, but early next morning the sun shone brightly. The trees and plants seemed all to have received new life, and the joyous sounds of beast and bird, in field and garden, were redoubled. Baburam Babu, Thakchacha, Bakreswar Babu, and Bancharam Babu were just getting into one of the numerous boats at the Vaidyabati Ghât, when suddenly Beni Babu and Becharam Babu appeared. Thakchacha pretended not to see them, and shouted to the boatmen to let the boat loose, while they remonstrated: "But master, the ebb tide is still running! how shall we be able to get along against it even if we punt with poles or haul with ropes?" Baburam Babu received his two friends very courteously, saying: "Your arrival is most opportune: come, let us all be off." Becharam Babu then remonstrated: "Ah Baburam, who in the world advised you to go and marry at your age?"
Baburam.-- Ah Becharam, my dear friend, am I so old as all that? I am a good deal younger than you are: besides, if you say that my hair is quite gray and that I have lost all my teeth, that is the case with a good many others even at an early age: it is not such a very great drawback. I have a good many things to think of; one of my sons has gone to the bad, another has become a lunatic: one of my daughters is no more, another is as
