"Not plunder, boy!" replied the old lady shrilly, "but to resume their own property."
"I care not," said Babar sternly, and rising to go; "I say I was wrong to yield. 'Twas senseless, to begin with, to exasperate so many men with arms in their hands. And then--Lo! grandam--I was precipitate, and in affairs of state many things that appear reasonable at first sight require to be well weighed and considered in a hundred different lights ere orders are given. I shall have trouble over that yet."
He stalked away in dignified fashion, and his mother sighed. "He grows a man, indeed. 'Tis time he married; but I wonder will she be good daughter to me?"
"She will be good granddaughter to me, that I'll warrant me," retorted Isân-daulet viciously. She would stand no nonsense from young chits.
So the marriage went on, and Babar performed his part of it with grave politeness and propriety. He wore his wedding garments with a difference, and when he sat beside his bride for the first time, holding her hand and repeating the words after the officiating Kâzi he felt quite a thrill. In fact he would like to have squeezed the little hand he held, only it was so covered with rings and gew-gaws that he was afraid of hurting it. Altogether the fateful she looked rather small; but distinctly fetching--though of course he could not see her face, in her veil of jasmine blossoms. They smelt, however, rather sickly.
That was in fact all that he vouchsafed to Dearest-One who, late in the evening, slipped in, dressed in white from head to foot, to wish her darling brother happiness.
"I would she smelt of violets instead," he said thoughtfully; "dost think, Dearest-One, it could have been the jasmine perfume and not the sweets that made me sick when I was five?"
And Dearest-One laughed; a laugh with a sob in it, and said to her mother ere she returned to her House-of-Rest:
"He is not fond of her, see you?"
"God forbid!" snapped Isân-daulet tartly. "Lo! he will love her when she is the mother of his son."