r ladies, and Stephen walked with Sister Margaret to the
door of the Institution. She mentioned to the Mother Superior afterwards
that young Mr. Arnold was really a delightful conversationalist.

CHAPTER XXVII

They talked a great deal in Plymouth about the way the time was passing
in Calcutta during those last three months before Laura should return,
the months of the rains. "Now," said Mrs. Simpson, early in July, "it
will be pouring every day, with great patches of the Maidan under water,
and rivers, my dear, RIVERS, in the back streets"; and Laura had a
reminiscence about how, exactly at that time, a green mould used to
spread itself fresh every morning on the matting under her bed in
Bentinck Street. Later on they would agree that perhaps by this time
there was a "break in the rains," and that nothing in the world was so
trying as a break in the rains, the sun grilling down and drawing up
steam from every puddle. In September, things, they remembered, would
be at their very worst and most depressing; one had hardly the energy to
lift a finger in September. Mrs. Simpson looked back upon the discomfort
she had endured in Bengal at this time of year with a kind of regret
that it was irretrievably over; she lingered upon a severe illness which
had been part of the experience. She seemed to think that with a little
judicious management she might have spent more time in that climate, and
less in England. There was in her tone a suggestion of gentle envy of
Laura, going forth to these dismal conditions with her young life in her
hands all tricked out for the sacrifice, which left Duff Lindsay and his
white and gold drawing-room entirely out of consideration. Any sacrifice
to Mrs. Simpson was alluring, she would be killed all day long, in a
manner, for its own sake.

The victim had taken her passage early in October, and during the first
week of that month Plymouth gathered itself into meetings to bid her
farewell. A curiously sacred character had fastened itself upon her; it
was not in the least realised that she was going out to be married to an
altogether secular young broker moving in fashionable circles in one
of the gayest cities in the world. Ones or two reverend persons in
the course of commending their young sister to the protection of
the Almighty in her approaching separation from the dear friends who
surrounded her in Plymouth, made references implying that her labours
would continue to the glory of God