to help in any capacity, and she had to assume an indignation
and a severity she was far from feeling to drive them away.

"Oh, do go away, please," she said. "You are only in the way. How can I
look after _tiffin_ if you interfere with me like this? Now do be good boys
and go off. There's Mrs. Rice arriving. Help her out of her trap."

They went reluctantly to the aid of the only other lady of their little
community, who was apparently unable to climb down from her bamboo cart
without help. Her husband and Daleham were already proferring their
services, but they were seemingly insufficient.

Mrs. Rice belonged to the type of woman altogether unsuited to the life of
a planter's wife. She was a shallow, empty-headed person devoid of mental
resources and incapable of taking interest in her household or her
husband's affairs. In her girlhood she had been pretty in a common style,
and she refused to recognise that the days of her youth and good looks had
gone by. On the garden she spent her time lounging in her bungalow in an
untidy dressing-gown, skimming through light novels and the fashion papers
and writing interminable letters to her family in Balham. Her elderly
husband, a weak, easy-going man, tired of her constant reproaches for
having dragged her away from the gay life of her London suburb to the
isolation of a tea-garden, spent as much of his day as possible in the
factory. In the bungalow he drank methodically and steadily until he was in
a state of mellow contentment and indifferent to his wife's tongue.

On club days Mrs. Rice was a different woman. She arrayed herself in the
latest fashions, or the nearest approach to them that could be reached by a
native tailor working on her back verandah with the guidance of the fashion
plates in ladies' journals. Her face thickly coated with most of the
creams, powders, and complexion beautifiers on the market, she swathed her
head in a thick veil thrown over her sun-hat. Then, prepared for conquest,
she climbed into the strong, country-built bamboo cart in which her husband
was graciously permitted to drive her to the club. Fortunately for her a
passable road to it ran from her bungalow, for she could not ride.

Arrived at the weekly gathering-place she delighted to surround herself
with all the men that she could cajole from the bar running down the
side of the one room of the building. With the extraordinary power of
self-deception of vain women she believed that mos