tance is attached to a woman's needs in comparison with her
lord's,--the superiority of the masculine sex being unchallenged. When
ice travelled by rail some hundreds of miles three times a week to
Muktiarbad, it invariably fell short when the servants were careless or
assisted to make it vanish. Every silent witness of the colloquy knew
that the Sahib's _bearer_ considered an iced whisky-and-soda his
perquisite at the close of a strenuous day, and would continue to have
it as long as ice came from Calcutta for the alleviation of sufferers
from the climate.

"Buck up, darling," said Meredith comfortingly, "you'll have the doctor
here in no time. Dalton is a clever fellow and prompt. They say he will
make a name for himself some day, he's such an able physician and
surgeon. What he doesn't understand concerning the ills that flesh is
heir to is not worth knowing, so we are jolly lucky to have him in such
a potty little station as ours. What got him sent here is a mystery;
usually we get fossils of the Uncovenanted service at Muktiarbad,
whereas Dalton is--" "Sorry," interrupting himself as his wife put her
hands to her head. "You've a headache, sweetheart, and it's not to be
wondered at."

"Is there nothing you can suggest for Baby in the meantime?" she
questioned.

"I shouldn't like to experiment, knowing nothing of kids--infants, I
mean," he replied with irritating cheerfulness. "Had it been a horse or
a dog"--he discreetly ceased and made tender love to her instead, for
his darling girl was sobbing piteously. "Don't worry," he advised with
masculine lack of understanding of maternal feelings, "babies are
marvellous creatures; like sponges, my dear. Squeeze them dry and they
swell out again. See how the youngsters swarm in the bazaars and
villages. Nothing seems to kill them," he asserted ignorantly. "They get
over almost any illness without a hundredth part of the care you lavish
on our little scallywag. Keep his head cool and you'll see, he'll be as
right as rain in the morning."

"Cool without ice!" she said witheringly.

"Cold water on the head with a dash of vinegar in it will do to carry
along with till the ice comes."

Somehow he was less concerned with the child's case than his wife's. Her
distress, the added reason for her abhorrence of India, cut him to the
heart and made him a coward of consequences. It was the child, that
insignificant atom of indefinite humanity, that had intruded itself
between th