Veru had no answer ready; and even when the stream of visitors set in, full of chattering congratulations and condolences, she did not find her tongue. The noise, she said, made her head ache and disturbed the baby. She stripped the finery from its little limbs, and, wrapping it warmly in her veil, held it tight to her breast, refusing to uncover it in order to gratify the curious.
Gunesh, coming in from the darkening fields, with their calm in his face, found her crying in the inner room.
"She wants to bring another wife home even now. She will not have patience and wait awhile." That was the burden of her complaint, while Gunesh sat comforting her uneasily.
"Surely, Veru, I have waited," he said, after a time. "Few would have been so patient; but thou art a good wife and duteous even with the mother."
"And thou! Oh, thou art good, Gunesh--so good to me! See, thy patience hath brought Nihâli. Wait a year, only a year longer, husband, and it will bring thee a son."
He looked at the mother and child with kindling eyes.
"A year! Surely, surely! That is but fair. So dry thine eyes, wife, for I am hungry."
That night, when Veru had retired to her bed with the baby, and he sat smoking with his mother in the outer yard, he asked her wistfully if she really thought the child was dwindling.
She turned on him fiercely, perhaps from a feeling of pity.
"And if it does, canst not trust me to physic it? Or wouldst thou have a man doctor to thy women's rooms? They tell me the travelling one sent on his rounds by the _Sirkar_[2] is in the next village but now. Shall I bid him come, since thou seemst to hold by new-fangled ways?"
Gunesh Chund filled his pipe again with poppy-leaves and tobacco, and watched his mother carding cotton viciously. What would she say if she knew of the promise he had made to Veru? The narcotic did not soothe him; and when sleep failed, he strolled out to where the village elders sat discussing the possible effects of this new settlement on the total of revenue due from the community. The familiar company was a relief, though it brought a doubt of his own wisdom in waiting a year. Still it was only a year. After that, if Veru failed to bear him a son, his duty to himself, to his ancestors, and to the _Sirkar_ demanded another wife.
