Page:The Wreck.djvu/152

148

THE WRECK

Kamala, then turned to his wife. "Well, you had better not stand out here any longer. The autumn sun isn't safe for you," and he departed in search of Ramesh.

Left alone with Kamala, Haribhabhini plied the girl with questions about herself.

"Your husband is a lawyer, isn't he? How long has he been practising? What income does he make out of it? Oh, he hasn't started practising yet? How do you live then? Did your father-in-law leave him well off? You don't know? What a queer girl you are ! Don't you know anything about your husband's people? How much does your husband allow you for housekeeping every month? You ought to see to everything yourself when you've no mother-in-law, a girl of your age! My daughter Bidhu's husband hands over all his earnings to her."

With such a running fire of questions and com- ments the old lady soon demonstrated to Kamala her own incapacity, and the girl saw clearly how unusual and ignominious her ignorance of her husband's worldly position and family history must appear. She realised that she had hitherto never had an opportunity for a heart-to-heart talk with Ramesh about his affairs and that she knew almost nothing about the man who was her husband For the first time she felt how peculiar her position was, and a sense of her own unworthiness overwhelmed her with confusion.

"Let me see your bangles, dear?" Haribhabhini be- gan again, "the gold isn't very good, is it? Didn't your father give you any ornaments when you were married? Oh, you've no father? You should have some things all the same. Hasn't your husband given you any? Bidhu's husband manages to give her some sort of trinket every two months or so."

This cross-examination was interrupted by the en- trance of Sailaja, leading her two-year-old daughter

Digitized by Google