began to amuse themselves at his expense. Mozoomdar was a little hard of hearing, and when they said to him: "Come, tell us, how is your wife?" he replied: "I shall have to roast them before I can eat them." They laughed heartily, and Mozoomdar would have liked to slip away, but there was no escape for him. The young Babus seized him, and making him sit on the bank of the river, gave him a pipe of tobacco, saying to him: 'Come, Mozoomdar, tell us all about the row at the marriage of the master of Vaidyabati: you are bit of a poet: it is a pleasure to us to listen to you. If you do not tell us, we shall not let you off, and we shall go and tell your wife that you have met with an untimely death.' Mozoomdar saw that he was in a bad way, and that there was no getting out of it unless he complied; so, making the best of a bad job, he set his stick and vegetables on the ground and commenced his narrative.
"It is a pitiable tale that I have to tell. What an experience has it been to me, accompanying the master! It was close on evening when the boat drew up at the Barnagore ghât. Some women had come to the riverside to draw water: as soon as they saw the master, they veiled their faces slightly and began to chatter hard to each other, laughing quietly the while. 'Ha what a lovely bridegroom!' they cried, 'what a sweet champac flower for a lucky girl to fondle in her braided hair!' Said one of them: 'Old or young, whichever he may be, the girl will have no difficulty in seeing him with her eyes: that of itself is something. May the wretched lot that has befallen me befall no one else: married at the age of six, I have never even set eyes on my husband. I have heard that he has married some fifty wives, and is over eighty years of age; and though he is such a wretched tottering old man, he never makes any objection to marry
