“How will it be possible to get any spiritual ideas into the minds of those who cannot distinguish the commonest objects?” thought Alicia. She forgot that this was probably the first time that the women had looked on the picture of a sheep: their eyes were untrained as well as their minds.
At the exclamations uttered, a young girl, quite as fair as Kripá Dé, turned to have a distant view of the wonderful book round which the bibis were crowding. It was but distant, for the girl did not rise from her place on the floor, near what looked like a round hole. Into this hole the fair creature, and a darker and stronger-looking woman beside her, were pounding away with alternate blows of what appeared to be short wooden clubs. The natives in this manner separate rice from the husk. The laborious occupation had made the young girl’s chaddar fall back on her shoulders, revealing a pale but to Alicia singularly interesting face.
[2]. Such guesses were actually made when A. L. O. E. showed such a print.
“Is not such work too hard for one so young?” said Alicia; for the slight, delicately-formed frame of the girl strongly contrasted with the stout figure and strong thick arms of her companion in labour.
“Premi always beats rice,” said Chand Kor, as if that were sufficient reply; and in a sharp tone she bade Premi go on with her work. The pounding, which had been suspended for two minutes, perhaps to rest weary arms, perhaps to give the woman the opportunity of giving a glance at the pictures, was instantly resumed.
“I suppose that Premi is Kripá Dé’s sister—she is white also,” observed Alicia. The observation met with no denial, though it was evident, from the contrast between the girl’s coarse dress and the youth’s very elegant attire, that they occupied very different stations in Chand Kor’s zenana.
“Why does Premi wear no jewels?” asked Alicia.
“She’s a widow,” said a rough-featured middle-aged woman, whose fat brown arms were encircled with at least half-a-dozen bracelets.
“A widow—and so young!” exclaimed Alicia. She had often heard of child-marriages; but seeing is a very different thing from hearing. It shocked her to think of the fairest inmate of the zenana being doomed to life-long labour and degradation. The dejected, hopeless expression in eyes which looked as if they might sparkle so brightly under their long dark lashes, awoke in Alicia a sense of compassion. “Is she a relation of yours?” asked Harold’s wife of the middle-aged woman.
“She is my father’s widow,” was the reply.