ened geese kept
available for such occasions.

The ladies did not always accompany Mr. Bright on his journeys about the
District, as they were usually hurried and undertaken with scant
preparation. Very little of the flesh-pots of Bengal sufficed to satisfy
Muktiarbad's Chief of Police, who had been thoroughly broken in to the
rough-and-tumble of official life in the _mafasil_. The presence of his
family in camp was a hindrance to Mr. Bright, and he was better pleased
to return, after his strenuous duties, to the peace of domesticity at
his bungalow in the Station. Moreover, there was little of interest in
the monotony of camping in lonely places for a young girl to whom her
mother wished to give every opportunity of settling in life, whatever
might be her own ideas respecting a vocation. Muktiarbad, though a rural
backwater of Bengal, and pronounced by the gay-minded, a penal
settlement, had matrimonial possibilities not to be despised by anxious
parents with daughters to be happily disposed of.

On the whole, it was a highly social if small community who made the
most of their opportunities for enjoyment, accepting the limitations of
the place to which it had pleased Providence and the Ruling Power to
appoint them, with the usual healthy philosophy which has made India so
rich in memories.

It mattered little if they had to endure the discomforts of the climate
and various inconveniences besides; others were in a worse case. Nor did
it matter if they never reached the goal for which they strove--it was
Kismet!

Fatalism is a habit of mind peculiar to the people of the East, where
the unexpected might happen at any time without warning; and it is not
unusual for Europeans to slip half-consciously into the same mental
attitude.

It is consequently not surprising that, in spite of many lurking
dangers, life in the rural districts is careless and free. Risks of
cholera, sunstroke, and snake-bite, are taken boldly without a thought
of possibilities. India has need of resourceful minds and nerves of
steel; and no use for the faltering and irresolute.

Even Mrs. Bright took chances for her family and friends when her cook
at the eleventh hour sent to Robinath Mukerjea's store in the bazaar for
tins of salmon (the fish procured from a local tank being deemed
inevitably earthy in flavour); for Mukerjea bought his provisions at
sales of old stock from the Army and Navy Stores, vowing they were fresh
consignments from _B