bride's female friends take sherbet and pawn after the bridegroom's
departure from the zeenahnah, after which they hasten away to the bride's
assembly, to detail the whole business of their mission.

I have often heard the ladies complain, that the time hangs very heavy on
their hands whilst the party have gone to perform Mayndhie, until the
good ladies return with their budget of particulars. Hundreds of questions
are then put to them by the inquisitive dames, how the procession passed
off?--whether accident or adventure befel them on the march?--what remarks
were made on the bride's gifts?---but most of all they want to know, how
the bridegroom looked, and how he behaved under their hands? The events of
the evening take up the night in detailing, with the occasional
interruptions of dinner, pawn, and sherbet; and so well are they amused,
that they seldom feel disposed to sleep until the crowing of the cock
warns them that the night has escaped with their diversified amusements.

The eventful Baarraat arrives to awaken in the heart of a tender mother
all the good feelings of fond affection; she is, perhaps, about to part
with the great solace of her life under many domestic trials; at any rate,
she transfers her beloved child to another protection. All marriages are
not equally happy in their termination; it is a lottery, a fate, in the
good mother's calculation. Her darling child may be the favoured of Heaven
for which she prays; she may be, however, the miserable first wife of a
licentious pluralist; nothing is certain, but she will strive to trust in
God's mercy, that the event prove a happy one to her dearly-loved girl.

I have said the young bride is in close confinement during the days of
celebrating her nuptials; on the third she is tormented with the
preparations for her departure. The mayndhie must be applied to her hands
and feet, the formidable operations of bathing, drying her hair, oiling
and dressing her head, dyeing her lips, gums, and teeth with antimony,
fixing on her the wedding ornaments, the nut (nose-ring) presented by her
husband's family: the many rings to be placed on her fingers and toes, the
rings fixed in her ears, are all so many new trials to her, which though a
complication of inconveniences, she cannot venture to murmur at, and
therefore submits to with the passive meekness of a lamb.

Towards the close of the evening, all this preparation being fulfilled,
the marriage portion is set in