Page:Krishna Kanta's Will.djvu/43

46 carrying light kalsis, lightly filled with water. Her kalsi was heavy as was her walk. Then Rohini was a widow; yet in no sense like a widow. The red of the betel nut was on her lip and bracelets on her arms. She wore a bordered garment, and her splendid tresses of jet-black hair fell in bewitching snake-like curls around her shoulders, the brass kalsi on her hip swaying slowly with the swaying of her walk. As a swan dances on the wave, so, gently, with the motion of the body, danced the kalsi. The two feet very slowly, like flowers falling from a tree, pressed the ground softly, the merry kalsi keeping time therewith. Swaying from side to side like a sail-burthened ship, the beautiful Rohini, with slow and measured steps, came to fetch water from the tank, lightening up the paths as she went, when from the boughs of a bakul tree the spring cuckoo piped his note.

"Kuhu! kuhu! kuhu!" Rohini looked all round. I could swear that if that bird, sitting on the bough, had seen that upward-thrown, agitated, tremulous, roguish glance of Rohini's, that small bird, pierced by such an arrow, turning topsy-turvy, with its feet