"See you, daughter," he said. "Prem for all he is head man and thy husband, is but man, and there is none to come after him."
Her face darkened with a hot blush again.
"The land will be there," she replied, haughtily.
"Aye, but who will own it! Strangers, they say, from far away. I have no dealings with strangers."
"There will be my share," she protested.
"Aye! but how wilt thou fare with strangers also, thou--childless widow?" he asked.
Her hot anger flamed up. "Wait thou and see! Meanwhile, since thou art afraid, take this," she tore off the solid gold bangle she wore, "'tis worth fifty rupees at the veriest pawnshop--give me forty!"
"Nay," replied the bunnya, with spirit. "'Tis worth a good seventy-five, though thy man--I'll warrant me--paid a hundred. So seventy-five thou shalt have; but, look you, daughter--or, if thou willest it, mother--keep Prem in leash, or a surety the footsteps of a dog will show on his ashes."
She looked at him, startled. Curious how the phrase, born of a belief that one can read the reward of the dead from the marks which show on his funeral pyre, should crop up. First from Prem, regarding the Lala-jee, next from the Lala-jee concerning Prem. Was there any truth in it, she wondered? She had the money, that was one comfort, and Prema would be pleased. Then, when the Biluch mare foaled, and they sold it as a yearling for the three hundred rupees Prem thought it would fetch, she would tell him how she had pawned his gift; meanwhile, a brass bracelet, to be had at the shop for a rupee, would serve to deceive his eyes. But not the sharp ones of Veru, the young widow who was the only other inhabitant of the wide courtyard with its slips of arcaded rooms round about it, and great stacks of millet stalks, and huge bee-hive stores of grain.
Her eyes were on it from the moment Sarsuti, sitting down above her on the little raised mud dais, began to spin.