Page:Shubala - a child-mother (IA shubalachildmoth00soraiala).pdf/13

 The gay uniforms of the lamp-bearers, the many coloured lights, and the drums and fifes and wonderful clothes of the music-men, added their own peculiar punctuation to this "sending-to-fetch-her-away" ceremony of modern Hinduism.

As an "Aunt-Mother" I was kindly allowed inside the innermost circle of feasting and blessing: but that is a story for another telling.

The Bridegroom wore a pyramid of flowers on his head, and ropes of flowers hiding his face: and my Shubala had only what glimpse of her lord that flower barrier afforded, peeping as she also must, from behind her own defences of finely woven blood-red silk, before that incongruous and magnificent Rolls-Royce bore her to the Mother-in-law Zenana.

It was a year before I saw her again. She was back once more in her mother's house for the coming of her Baby: and I made the Baby-Budget with no little