One night, as he sat smoking and warming his hands over the charcoal, “Boy,” says he, “it’s high time you got married.”
“Now the gods forbid!” cries the young man. “Father, what makes you say such terrible things? Or are you joking? You must be joking,” he says.
“I’m not joking at all,” says the father; “I never spoke a truer word, and that you’ll know soon enough.”
“But, father, I am mortally afraid of women.”
“And am I not the same?” says the father. “I’m sorry for you, my boy.”
“Then what for must I marry?” says the son.
“In the way of nature I shall die before long, and you’ll need a wife to take care of you.”
Now the tears stood in the young man’s eyes when he heard this, for he was tender-hearted; but all he said was, “I can take care of myself very well.”
“That’s the very thing you cannot,” says his father.
The long and short of it was that they found the young man a wife. She was young, and as pretty as a picture. Her name was Tassel, just that, or Fusa, as they say in her language.