" There was no trouble on the score of caste, both families
being soodra; otherwise, the sensitive social balance would have had to
be adjusted by the payment of a sum of money. When the skirts of the
bride and bridegroom had been fastened together with blades of the
sweet-scented cusa grass,--when he had said, "May that heart which is
thine become my heart, and this heart which is mine become thy
heart,"--when, hand in hand, they had stept into the seventh of the
mystic circles,--Mr. and Mrs. Karlee were an accomplished Hindoo fact.
To the parents on both sides, the wedding was a costly performance.
There were the irrepressible and voracious Brahmins to propitiate, the
hungry friends of both families to feast for three days, the musicians
and the nautch-girls and the _tamasha-wallahs_[19] to be bountifully
buksheeshed; and when the bridal palanquin was borne homeward, it was a
high-priced indispensability that the procession should satisfy the best
soodra society,--
"With the yellow torches gleaming,
And the scarlet mantles streaming,
And the canopy above
Swaying as they slowly move."
Karlee has assured me that neither his father nor his father-in-law,
although both were soodras of fair credit and condition, ever quite
recovered from the financial shock of that "awspidges okashn.
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