'Good, good. Nor I of you, brother, really. Well, and how are things with you now?'
'The light half of the moon returns. This Mahatmaya is giving me his chenas to work for a share of the crop.'
'Good, good. Where there is food, there is happiness. Never have I known a year like this, and I am growing an old man now. On the poya[43] day two months back there was not a kuruni of grain in all the village. I went to the Korala Mahatmaya; I said to him: "Can men live on air?" He is a hard man. He said (his stomach swollen with rice), "For ten years now I have told you to leave your village. There are fields and land elsewhere; there is work elsewhere; they pay for work on the roads. If you make your paddy field on rock, do you expect the rice to grow?" I said to him, "The Government must give food or the people will die." Then he said, "Go away and die quickly," and he abused me, calling me a tom-tom-beater, and drove me away. So I went to this Mahatmaya and arranged about the chenas. Had it not been for him, we should all have starved.'
'I know. The Mahatmaya has been very good.'
'And now again the Mahatmaya said to me: "It is a foolish thing to quarrel with a brother. It is long ago and about a woman. A young man hot after a woman! What use is it? Send for him and be friends."'
'The Mahatmaya is very good to us.'
'I was wrong, brother. I say it to you myself. I used shameful words to you. But that was long ago. A young man must have a woman. It is foolish to stand in his way. Even the buck will turn upon you in the rutting season.'
'All that is forgotten now.'
'So the Mahatmaya says: "It is time," he said, "for him to marry. Send for him and become friends again. For the heat of youth is now past." So I sent for you.'
'I have come.'