As a little girl, all had gone well with her; she was petted and caressed; she played daily in the sun with other village children, erecting palaces and temples with dust and blossoms; her hair was carefully plaited and plastered with cocoanut oil; she wore a big nose-ring, anklets, and bangles--not brass or pewter, but real silver ones, for she was married to the heir of a rich thakur, a delicate, puny boy of her own age. But one rains he died, and there was sore, sore lamentation. Had Jasoda realized what his death signified to her, she would have wailed ten times louder than any paid mourner; but ignorance was surely bliss, and she was not _very_ sorry, for Sapona had been greedy, fretful, and tyrannical. He had often struck her, pinched her, and pulled her long plaits, or run screaming with tales to his mother--a fat woman with a shrill tongue and a heavy arm--whom Jasoda feared. But after Sapona had been carried away to the burning ghâut, all seemed changed; every one appeared to hate Jasoda, yea, even her own grandmother. Her ornaments were taken off, her head was shorn, her cloth, though white, was coarse and old; there were no more games under the tamarind trees, and no more sweets. Jasoda’s life was blighted in the bud, for, at the tender age of six, she was that miserable outcast, a Braminee widow. Poor pariah! she would stand aloof, with wide-open wistful eyes (ostentatiously shunned by the other children in the courtyard), and wonder what it all meant. She would piteously inquire of her grandmother, as the crone sat spinning cotton, “What she had done. Wherefore might she not eat with her, and why did Jooplee push her, and strike her, if she approached her? and wherefore did her mother-in-law, and other women, hold aside their clothes lest she should touch them as she passed?”