While Tommy affected to collapse under the lash of her satire, she leapt
from the saddle to imprint a kiss on the rose-leaf skin of the infant's
cheek. "What a perfect doll it is--did any one see any thing half so
adorable!"

"It seems to me like all other babies," Tommy remarked indifferently.
"When it isn't asleep it is bawling; when it isn't bawling it's asleep.
I have yet to understand why a girl can never pass a pram without
stopping to kiss the baby in it!" Nevertheless, he thought it a pleasing
habit with which he was not inclined to quarrel, but for the delay it
occasioned in the ride.

"I would like you to tell Mrs. Meredith that the Squawk is like all
other babies in the world and hear what she has to say!" Honor said
indignantly. "This one is angelic!"

Tommy dismounted with the air of a martyr and peered at the bundle
containing a human atom almost smothered in silk and laces. "Hallo! its
eyes are actually open! It is the first time I have seen the miracle.
Peep-bo!" he squeaked, bobbing his head at the apparition and crooking a
finger up and down a few inches from the infant's nose.

"Tommy, you are a silly!" Honor exploded with laughter. "As if it can
understand. You might be a tree for all it knows!"

"Then all I can say is, I have no use for kids until they develop some
intellect." He assisted her to remount and they continued their way to
Sombari. Soon, the last of the bungalows was left behind and they were
cantering side by side along the main road which divided paddy fields
still containing stagnant rain water and the decaying stalks of the
harvested corn. At intervals on the road pipal trees afforded shelter to
travellers by the wayside. In the distance, across rough country
overgrown with scrub and coarse, thatching grass, could be seen the
minarets of an ancient ruin--Muktiarbad's one and only show-place for
sightseers--too familiar to the inhabitants to excite even passing
notice.

In the meantime Honor soliloquised aloud--"I do so wish we could get
Mrs. Meredith more reconciled to India," she sighed. "She has only one
point of view at present, and that is a mother's. If she could only be
made to see her husband's point of view and realise also her duties as a
wife, she would be perfect, for Joyce Meredith is very lovable and good.
I never knew any one so pretty and so free from personal vanity. But she
is too sure of her husband. Too certain that he will go on worshipping
her no matte