Man's body to wear.
Great Râm, grant me life
From the grain of a golden deed;
Sink not my soul in the strife
To wake as a weed."
After that his work in the fields was over. Only at sunrise and sunset his tall, gaunt figure stood out against the circling sky as he wandered through the sprouting wheat waiting for the rain which never came. Not for the first time in his long life of waiting, so he took the want calmly, soberly.
"It is a bad year," he said, "the next will be better. For the sake of the boy's marriage I would it had been otherwise; but Anunt Râm must advance the money. It is his business."
Whereat Jodha, the youngest son, better versed than his father in new ways, shook his head doubtfully. "Have a care of Anunt, O baba-ji,"[[6]] he suggested with diffidence. "Folk say he is sharper than ever his father was."
"'Tis a trick sons have, or think they have, nowadays," retorted old Jaimul wrathfully. "Anunt can wait for payment as his fathers waited. God knows the interest is enough to stand a dry season or two."
In truth fifty per cent, and payment in kind at the lowest harvest rates, with a free hand in regard to the cooking of accounts, should have satisfied even a usurer's soul. But Anunt Râm wanted that handful of grain for the pigeons and the youngsters' mess of pottage. He wanted the land, in fact, and so the long row of dibbled-in seals dotting the unending scroll of accounts began to sprout and bear fruit. Drought gave them life, while it brought death to many a better seed.