Page:Karl Gjellerup - The Pilgrim Kamanita - 1911.djvu/104

 wedding guests, and especially my father, were so nearly beside themselves at the threatened contact with the threshold, that my false step was all but entirely disregarded.

In the middle of the house I took my station to the left of my wife, on a red bull's hide that lay with the neck towards the cast, and with the hairy side uppermost. Now my father had, after a long search, and with endless trouble, come upon a male prodigy that had only brothers and no sisters—not even dead ones—and was the son of a father who had been in like case, having had brothers only. Moreover, this was actually true of his grandfather also; and, to the accuracy of the statements in each case, legal testimony was forthcoming. This little boy was to be placed on my bride's knee. Already there stood at her side the copper dish containing lotus flowers from the swamps, which she was to lay in the folded hands of the child, and everything was prepared, when—the hapless little urchin was nowhere to be found! Not till afterwards, when it was too late, did a man-servant discover that the child had found the sacrificial bed, between the fires, all too enticing, and had rolled himself in the soft grass till he was practically buried in it. Now, of course, the sacrificial bed had to be made up anew, and to that end fresh kuça grass cut—which was in itself reversing the due order of things, as the grass had to be cut at the rising of the sun.

We were finally obliged, as I shave indicated, to do without this crown of the whole function, and to content ourselves with the hastily procured son of a mother who had borne only sons. But my father was in such a state of excitement at the failure of this precaution, on which he had built his highest hopes, that I feared a fit of apoplexy