Meanwhile he had to water his garden, and went to the backyard for the purpose. The watering was done by a pikôta. He used to run up and down the pole while a friend of his, the son of his neighbour, lifted the water and irrigated the garden.
Meanwhile his wife cooked the dish of mango and fish in a pan, and found the flavour so sweet that even while the fish was only half cooked she began to taste one bit of it after another till more than half had already gone down her throat! The dish was at last cooked, and the few remaining slices in the pan were taken off the fire, so she went into the verandah and from thence saw her husband running up and down the pikôta. She beckoned to him that the dish was ready and that he should come in and taste it. However, he never noticed her, but kept on running up and down the pikôta, and while running up and down he was obliged to wave his hands about, and this his wife mistook as an indication that she might eat up her portion of the dish. At any rate her imagination made her think so; and she went in and ate a slice, and then went out into the verandah again to call her husband who was still running up and down the pikôta. Again, her husband, so she thought, waved his hands in permission to go on with her dinner. Again she went in and had another slice. Thus it went on for a full ghatikâ till the last slice was consumed.
"Alas!" thought she, "With what great eagerness my husband fetched the fish and the mango, and how sadly, out of greediness, have I disappointed him. Surely his anger will know no bounds when he comes in. I must soon devise some means to save myself."
So she brought the pan in which she cooked the fish and mango out of the house and covered it with another pan of similar size and sat down before it. Then she undid her hair and twisted it about her head until it was dishevelled. She then began to make a great noise. This action by a woman in an illiterate family of low caste is always supposed to indicate a visitation from a goddess and a demon; so when her husband from the pikôta tree saw the state of his wife, his guilty conscience smote him. The change in his wife alarmed him, and he came down suddenly and stood before her. As soon as she saw him she roared out at him:--