'Now the burning has been prohibited, a man cannot get rid of a bad wife so easily?'
'But she was a good wife, sir, and bad ones do not often become suttees.'
'Who made the pile for her?'
'Some of her family, but I forget who. They thought it must have been a call from Heaven, when, in reality, it was only a dream.'
'You are a Rājpūt?'
'Yes.'
'Do Rājpūts in this part of India now destroy their female infants?'
'Never; that practice has ceased everywhere in these parts; and is growing into disuse in Bundēlkhand, where the Rājās, at the request of the British Government, have prohibited it among their subjects. This was a measure of real good. You see girls now at play in villages, where the face of one was never seen before, nor the voice of one heard.'
'But still those who have them grumble, and say that the Government which caused them to be preserved should undertake to provide for their marriage. Is it not so?'
'At first they grumbled a little, sir; but as the infants grew on their affections, they thought no more about it.'[16]