Page:Shubala - a child-mother (IA shubalachildmoth00soraiala).pdf/9

 SHUBALA—A CHILD-MOTHER.

Shubala was ten years old when the tragedy happened, and you also would call it a tragedy, if you had known Shubala as I had done since she was a baby; and had tried as I had done to make for her something of the happy childhood of play which is the lot of my English Baby-friends across the Seas.

The tragedy was marriage—which, said her mother, could not really, no not even for love of me, be postponed a minute longer.

"But for love of you," she explained, "Shubala would have been married at 4 years of age. Yes, as I myself was married." And the statement was, I found, alas true indeed. Shubala's mother had been married when she was four, had been married and taken to her husband's home, whence there was no