Note 1 — XVII. Light Makes Prosperity.

Now Vinîta and his sons used to go out in the mornings to gather dried leaves which his three daughters-in-law stitched into plates (patrâvalî), which the male members of the family sold in the bâzâr for about four paṇams each.1 Sometimes these leaf-plates would go for more, sometimes for less; but whatever money the father-in-law brought home his daughters-in-law used for the day’s expense. The youngest of them was Suguṇî, who spent the money most judiciously, and fed her father-in-law and his sons sumptuously. Whatever remained she partook of with her two poor sisters-in-law, and lived most contentedly. And the family respected Suguṇî as a paragon of virtue, and had a very great regard for her. Her parents, as they had threatened, never returned to see how their last, and of course once beloved, child was doing in her husband’s home. Thus passed a couple of years.