THE SLAVE GIRL OF AGRA
For Hemlata had come to the marriageable age of twelve, and Noren was nearly sixteen, and one morning she found them together in the Palace gardens as she was returning from her morning bath. Noren was fetching water from the lake, and Hemlata was watering some jasmine bushes which she had herself planted. Hemlata's mother paused awhile and looked at the happy children, and that day she made up her mind. And a mother's fond wishes mingled in her prayers as she bowed before the image in the garden temple.
Late in the afternoon, when Nobo Kumar was resting himself after his mid-day meal, his wife came and sat by the bedside, and bending forward so as to meet her husband's eyes with her dark noble eyes, she spoke:
"Thy face is pale with anxiety and care, my husband, and thine eyes have lost their wonted glow. Much I fear thy ceaseless work is telling on thy health."
"A man has many cares and many duties, my wife. How can a woman comprehend them?"
"Yet fain would a wife know something of her husband's anxieties, so that she may share them, and try to remove them. Methinks some new weight is pressing on thy mind since some weeks past, and sometimes thy wife has been judged worthy of sharing thy troubles."
"It is true, dear wife, new anxieties are pressing on me with every passing year, and thy counsel is ever of value to me. The time is not far distant when the young Noren will claim his own."
"And thou wilt have won the approbation of all
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