1 a vizier's daughter - Hazara.net

65
A VIZIER’S DAUGHTER – A TALE OF THE HAZARA WAR
finished there will be nothing more to go to the cupboard for, and at
the rate things are going on at present, that time is not far distant.”
There was a little gnawing pain at Gul Begum’s heart as she listened to
her mother, she seemed so little glad to see her back, or if she were
glad she had a strange way of showing it. How different it would all
have been had her father been at home. What a warm embrace would
have been in store for her! What gladness, and what a rest! The girl
sighed.
“Where is he? What has become of him? Is he still alive? God grant he
may not be a prisoner; better dead than that.”
Towards afternoon the neighbours all came crowding in. “Gul Begum
back? What is the meaning of this?” the y all exclaimed. “Why, we
thought she was married b y now and settled for life. It’s time she was
settled too, Halima,” one of the elder women said seriously. “This
Mohamed Jan ma y not be much of a match for Ghulam Hossain’s
daughter, but he is at any rate better than no one. Strange that with so
handsome a face no one should come forward to seek the girl in
marriage.”
“Plent y have come forward,” Halima replied indignantly. “M y girl is
not short of suitors, but her father is difficult to please, and is he not
right?”
She could abuse her husband well herself at times, but like many
another more civilised woman, she was not going to stand there and
hear other people question his wisdom.
“These are not the times to keep unmarried girls at home,” the other
went on pertinaciously. “She’s named on Mohamed Jan, let her go to
him in marriage I say.”
Gul Begum sat still and listened. What these women said cut like very
knives into her heart, and for once she almost questioned her father’s
wisdom in providing for her temporary safet y in the wa y he had done.
CHAPTER XIII
A TRAITOR
WEEK succeeded week, and time brought no further change to the
Hazara village among the hills. Gul Begum resumed her old natural