We got down, a husband and wife, right into the District Magistrate
to confirm the tie legally.
* * * * * *
I occasionally wrote to my mother anticipating my good health and wishing her the same. What further I did was veiled in secrecy.
I had to stay in the new place for more than a year. Here I served in the office.
Mother wanted me back home earlier as I had long been out.
* * * * *
We prepared to come up and did actually start. In the neighbourhood of my home town, the baby cast glances of radiance, being perhaps elated to have the chance of seeing his father's land for the first time.
As we advanced, I was charged with an unconscious feeling of embarrassment to think of what spectacle was to come. But I summoned courage to face anything, come what may.
* * * * *
Matters were on the edge of a precipice, the fall of footprints might tumble down everything so far happened.
So in the semi-darkness of the night, I led my wife, a baby in her lap. Ideas precipitated and soon began to evaporate briskly. I struggled the way; mists crowded my eyes and sacked my easy impasse. And there we stood in front of the door, closed from inside. I banged at the door gravely, and composed myself. I speculated, something, good or evil, might at any moment explode.
I thought we had come to her with great hope, my wife to be approved of, my son, now a baby, as an article of precious presentation, as true as her blood which still coursed on my arteries and veins, and I to lift her up from the world of her only want for the rest of her days.
"It was eleven of the night, she might be asleep", I thought. So I renewed my knocking-there was no response from inside. Only the sound traversing inside the house echoed back to me.
A few minutes later, the door opened. I found our old servant, standing by, with a note of welcome. Face emaciated, he projected a
