The Fortunate Fourth

Mimosa’s boys are full of character and very lovable. The eldest is a thoughtful, upright little lad, the boy who followed Mayil is a child of delicate spirit. Then comes the treasured Fourth, whom, from the first minute we saw him, we called Mischief.

The fourth child, if a son, is supposed to bring good fortune toa family. The fifth, if a daughter, and the fourth, if a son, are the children of good luck. Woe betide a family in which the fourth child is a girl, or the fifth a boy. Children of ill omen, cursed by the gods from their birth, they bring misfortune upon all who belong to them. Mimosa hardly let her Fortunate Fourth out of her sight, and in fact never parted from him for a day. He was the very light of her eyes.

The night before his birth she had been in sore trouble. Her husband had fever in a distant town, and she could not possibly go to him. In vain she had tried to think of ways of helping him. There was nothing she could do, and her heart failed her. It was one of her darkest hours, she could not see a light anywhere at all. She

tried to pray, but no words came. She could 82 only look up in the dark and say: ‘‘O Lord, O Lord!”’

Then she fell asleep, and she dreamed that she saw her babe, a boy, child of good fortune. He was lying beside her on her mat, well, whole, and good to look upon. And as she looked and loved him, she saw a snake coil round him and then glide under the door of the room and out of the house into the street. And when she told her dream, all united in assuring her that it was most propitious. The snake was Saturn, god of ill-luck. He had haunted her for many years, witness her tribulations, poverty, illness, the death of her little peacock; but now all would change. Had not Saturn departed?

And in the unaccountable way things happen here, immediately after the boy’s birth her husband, for the first time in his unfortunate life, found a gold jewel lying on the open road and brought it straight to her. They waited a while and inquired for the owner; but she (it was a woman’s jewel) could not be found. Then, feeling it was clearly theirs, they had it made into a ’ necklet, a little bank, not very safe according to our ways of thinking, but always at hand, within sight, something visibly between oneself and nothing. Given in such a way, it was doubly valuable, and the husband was encouraged, and the salt bazaar prospered, and Mimosa, who had taken the gift from the God of gods and wore it gratefully, was happy too. Verily he was stronger than Saturn. If, indeed, the snake were that malevolent influence, was it not He who had caused it to depart?