ate Sahib, thus
oil-besmeared. He shook and twitched like a koi-fish, ready dressed for
the frying pan. He finished his bath in a great hurry, tugged on his
clothes somehow, and ran breathlessly to the outer apartments. The
bearer said that the Sahib had just left after waiting for a long time.
How much of the blame for concocting this drama of invented incidents
may be set down to Labanya, and how much to the bearer is a nice problem
for ethical mathematics to solve.

Nabendu's heart was convulsed with pain within his breast, like the tail
of a lizard just cut off. He moped like an owl all day long.

Labanya banished all traces of inward merriment from her face, and kept
on enquiring in anxious tones: "What has happened to you? You are not
ill, I hope?"

Nabendu made great efforts to smile, and find a humorous reply. "How
can there be," he managed to say, "any illness within your jurisdiction,
since you yourself are the Goddess of Health?"

But the smile soon flickered out. His thoughts were: "I subscribed
to the Congress fund to begin with, published a nasty letter in a
newspaper, and on the top of that, when the Magistrate Sahib himself
did me the honour to call on me, I kept him waiting. I wonder what he is
thinking of me."

Alas, father Purnendu Sekhar, by an irony of Fate I am made to appear
what I am not.

The next morning, Nabendu decked himself in his best clothes, wore his
watch and chain, and put a big turban on his head.

"Where are you off to?" enquired his sister-in-law.

"Urgent business," Nabendu replied. Labanya kept quiet.

Arriving at the Magistrate's gate, he took out his card-case.

"You cannot see him now," said the orderly peon icily.

Nabendu took out a couple of rupees from his pocket. The peon at once
salaamed him and said: "There are five of us, sir." Immediately Nabendu
pulled out a ten-rupee note, and handed it to him.

He was sent for by the Magistrate, who was writing in his dressing-gown
and bedroom slippers. Nabendu salaamed him. The Magistrate pointed to
a chair with his finger, and without raising his eyes from the paper
before him said: "What can I do for you, Babu?"

Fingering his watch-chain nervously, Nabendu said is shaky tones:
"Yesterday you were good enough to call at my place, sir--"

The Sahib knitted his brows, and, lifting just one eye from his paper,
said: "I called at your place! Babu, what nonsense are you talking?"

"Beg your pardon, sir," faltered out