“You are unsorrowing, Bardanin, because you have so little!”
“That may be true,” said Bardanin. “When you gather riches you think more, but you sleep less.”
“It is true that I have not slept,” said Vana. “Mardurbo’s riches should come to Mardurbo’s children.”
“There are always good reasons for things being as they are,” answered Bardanin, and stretched his arms, for he had lost sleep in the hills.
Vana went to see her sister Lonami. Lonami lived in the street of the well, and it being now afternoon the two, sitting upon the doorstep, could watch a procession of women bringing pitchers and jars and water-skins for filling against the night.
Said Lonami: “Have you finished the web with the purple border?”
“Not yet.”
“Any chief will give you oxen for it.—I make a patterned web myself, but it is not like yours.”
“Lonami, men journey and make war. They take all manner of cattle and trade for what they do not take. The sheep and cattle, the asses and horses, breed fast, and they have great flocks and herds. Then they trade with these, and always it grows! Men say that theirs are the metals that come out of the earth. How big the earth is I do not know, nor when she gave them the copper and silver and iron! They go to war and bring back rich and strange things and many bond-folk. A woman must weave much cloth or dye many webs, or make many pots or baskets, or plant much grain before she can buy a bondman on a bondwoman. Men grow richer than women, and that to me is like a cloud in the sky when the brook is already flooding!”
“It is true enough!” said Lonami.