The next instant, the Nawab went out and sent for the Chief Secretary. He directed him to issue a mandate on a Hindu officer at Murshidabad to the following effect :—Not very far from Murshidabad, there is a place called Vedagram. A learned Brahmin by name Chandrashekhar Sharma lives there. He taught me astrology. He should be brought up and made to calculate as to where Dalani Begum would be both during and after the war, in case war should shortly break out with the English.
The Chief Secretary carried out the instructions of the Nawab. He sent a man to Murshidabad to fetch Chandrashekhar.
CHAPTER II
THE “ BHEEMA. ”
THICK rows of palms skirted the banks of a big tank called “the Bheema.” The golden rays of the declining sun had fallen on its dark waters; the dark shadows of the palms along with the sunbeams had been imprinted on their surface; by the side of a ghât or water-stair-way, a few small trees mantled with creepers and linked together by them, with the branches spreading out up to the water-surface, sheltered from view the water-frolicking ladies. In that dim seclusion Shaibalini and Sundari with metallic pitchers in their hands were sporting with the water.
What is meant by water sporting with a girl? We do not know that, we are not water. He only can tell us who has been melted into water at the sight of beauty. He alone can tell us how the water, tossing up ripples urged by the onset of the pitcher and marking
