in appearance, but
the amount of damage done is infinitesimal. I was then asked to act as
arbitrator in the case. I declined; but I told Babaji that he was
totally in the wrong. Finally, after all this waste of time and
temper, he gave up the struggle and withdrew his forces to within the
proper limit.

That a man of education, who had himself been a magistrate, should
have made this attempt to filch a strip of land off his neighbour
might seem unaccountable. But his natural Indian characteristics, when
circumstances prompted it, came uppermost, and his English training
for the time being went to the wall.

The new bungalow proved after all to be a white elephant. The
water-supply was limited, and without plenty of water Babaji said he
could not live there. His servants, who were city people, said that if
he went to live in the country they would not go with him. So the
bungalow awaits the day, which we sometimes dream of, when it may fall
into our hands and become a convalescent home for Indians, which is a
great need, and for which it is admirably adapted.

Houses built by English missionaries for Indian mission workers are,
as a rule, not at all the kind of abode which the tenants really like.
A row of cottages, built some years ago in Poona City for Indian
Christians, has never been popular; chiefly because, besides many
doors and windows, there are ventilators in the roof which cannot be
closed. In more than one mission school some of the doors and windows
have had to be permanently bricked up, because both teachers and
children complained so much of the cold. Visions of tidy cottages for
Indian Christians gradually get dispelled. Here and there a home-like
dwelling is to be found, but they are scarce. A young married girl,
who had been brought up in refined surroundings and had an unusually
comfortable home when first married, had to live for a time in the
open sheds and apparent discomfort of a plague camp. Instead of
disliking it she settled in with great contentment, cooked her own
dinner in the open, and was evidently more at home than in her
well-built house. This also, as time went on, gradually lost its
original look of comfort. Hens, and goats, and cow-dung cakes, and
rubbish of all sorts by degrees got the upper hand, and proportionate
to the increase of apparent discomfort was the increase of contentment
in the minds of the young couple who lived there.

CHAPTER XXXVII

UNFINISHED PLANS IN