It is Christmas time in a single station on the frontiers of Bengal, and a very dull Christmas the members of the 145th Bengal Muftis find it in consequence. For to be quartered in a single station means to be compelled to associate with the same people day after day and month after month and year after year; and to carry on that old quarrel with Jones, or to listen to the cackle of Mrs Robinson, or be bored with the twaddle of Major Smith, without any hope of respite or escape, and leaving the gentlemen out of the question, the ladies of the 145th Bengal Muftis are not in the best frame of mind at the time my story opens to spend the day of peace and goodwill towards men together. Regimental ladies seldom are. They are quarrelsome and interfering, and backbiting enough towards each other in an English garrison town, but that is a trifle compared to the way in which they carry on in our outlying stations in India. And yet, the ladies of the 145th Bengal Muftis are not bad specimens of the sex, taken individually. It is only when they come in contact that their Christian love and charity make themselves conspicuous. Mrs Dunstan, the wife of the colonel, is the most important of them all, and the most important personage, too, in this little story of a misfortune that involved herself, therefore let Mrs Dunstan be the first to advance for inspection. As we meet her, she is seated in a lounging chair in her own drawing-room, at Mudlianah, with a decided look of discontent or unhappiness upon her countenance. The scene around her would seem fair enough in the eyes of those who were not condemned to live in it. Her room is surrounded by a broad verandah, which is so covered by creepers as to be a bower of greenery. Huge trumpet-shaped blossoms of the most gorgeous hues of purple, scarlet and orange, hang in graceful festoons about the windows and open doorways, whilst the starry jessamine and Cape honeysuckle fill the air with sweetness. Beyond the garden, which is laid out with much taste, though rather in a wild and tangled style, owing to the luxuriance of the vegetation, lie a range of snowy hills which appear quite close in the transparent atmosphere, although in reality they are many miles away. Mrs Dunstan’s room is furnished, too, with every luxury as befits the room of a colonel’s wife, even in an up country station. The chairs and sofas are of carved ebony wood, and cane work from Benares; the table is covered with flowers, books, and fancy work; a handsome piano stands in one corner; the floor is covered with coloured matting, and in the verandah are scattered toys from various countries, a token that this comfortable home does not lack the chief of married joys, a child-angel in the house.