Hiramani soon found Kadampur too hot to hold her
and took her departure for ever, to every one's intense relief.
CHAPTER XV
A Tame Rabbit.
When a penniless Hindu marries into a wealthy family he is sorely
tempted to live with, and upon, his father-in-law. But the ease
thus secured is unattended by dignity. The gharjamai, "son-in-law of
the house," as he is styled, shocks public opinion, which holds it
disgraceful for an able-bodied man to eat the bread of idleness. Pulin
incurred a certain degree of opprobrium by quartering himself on
Debendra Babu; neighbours treated him with scant courtesy, and the
very household servants made him feel that he was a person of small
importance. He bore contumely with patience, looking forward to
the time when Debendra Babu's decease would give him a recognised
position. His wife was far more ambitious. She objected strongly to
sharing her husband's loss of social standing and frequently reproached
him with submitting to be her father's annadas (rice-slave).
So, one morning, he poured his sorrows into Nalini's sympathetic ear.
"Mahasay," he said, "you know that people are inclined to blame me
for living in idleness, and I do indeed long to chalk out a career
for myself. But I don't know how to set about it and have no patron to
back me.
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