ad come
about. We were sitting on a mud verandah, opening on to a square
courtyard; two women pounding rice, two more grinding it, another
sweeping, a cow, some fowls, a great many children, and several babies,
made it exceedingly difficult to concentrate one's attention on
anything, and still more difficult to get the wandering brains of an old
woman to concentrate on a subject in which she had no interest. She had
been interested in the photograph, but that was different.

The conversation ended by her remarking that it was getting dark, ought
I not to be going home? It was not getting dark yet, but it meant that
she had had enough, so I salaamed and went, hoping for a better chance
again. Next time we visited the Village of the Tamarind she was nowhere
to be seen; she had gone to her own village, she had only come here for
the funeral. Would she return, we asked? Not probable, they said, "she
had come and gone." "Come and gone." As they said it, one felt how true
it was. Come, for that one short afternoon within our reach; gone, out
of it now for ever.

In that same village there is one who more than any other drew one's
heart out in affection and longing, but so far all in vain.

I first saw her in the evening as we were returning home. She was
sitting on her verandah, giving orders to the servants as they stood in
the courtyard below. Then she turned and saw us. We were standing in the
street, looking through the open door. The old lady, in her white
garments, with her white hair, sat among a group of women in vivid
shades of red, behind her the dark wood of the pillar and door, and
above the carved verandah roof.

The men were fresh from the fields, and stood with their rough-looking
husbandry implements slung across their shoulders; the oxen, great
meek-eyed beasts, were munching their straw and swishing their tails as
they stood in their places in the courtyard, where some little children
played.

The paddy-birds, which are small white storks, were flying about from
frond to frond of the cocoanut palms that hung over the wall, and the
sunset light, striking slanting up, caught the underside of their wings,
and made them shine with a clear pale gold, gold birds in a darkness of
green. A broken mud wall ran round one end, and the sunset colour
painted it too till all the red in it glowed; and then it came softly
through the palms, and touched the white head with a sort of sheen, and
lit up the brow of the fi