In his pride of conquest he forgot all limits and claimed the wife of the Destroyer himself. Then the Great God, angry, came himself to earth to punish the Giant, and slew that powerful one as he lay beside his bride in all his security of possession. But when the poor lady walked forth to make living sacrifice of herself, as was meet, upon the dead body of her lord--it was the Great God himself who was enamoured of her, and he sat by the burning corpse disconsolate. None could drag him back to heaven; nor moved he night and day till the object of his love had found new form in the sweet-smelling _Tulsi_, with its soft green leaves and brown flowering spirals, struggling upwards to the light. “Forget not the perfume of the _Tulsi_. The customs of your race, in marrying, in dying, in loving....” sang my friend. “It means all that to us who sprinkle it with water in the morning.” * * * * * But in my little garden there was no holy _Tulsi_ to sprinkle with water in the morning! Transplanting suiteth not the aged: and the friend of the Garden-people appeared before me sad and shaven. “My Mother is dead, and at my hands: have I leave to carry her to the waters of oblivion?” Leave, of course: but let the blame be rightly fixed; not the worshipper, but the Huzoor, she who ordered, carried the sin. This did not satisfy, as I would have wished: and it was not till many days later that the faithful slave brought me a cleared brow, and his mountain top of philosophy. “But to him who does not deem it sin it is not sin.” Now is that what the sacred plant will now say henceforth and for ever to my lover of ceremonies in his garden, and am I responsible for the dangerous doctrine? I wonder. XIII A CHILD OR TWO In an orthodox Hindu house of mine acquaintance are to be found two darling Babies, aged four and five. They are girls, one named “Lightning-Beloved,” the other after a Greek Goddess. I made their acquaintance first in the Summer, and they were most seasonably dressed in gold waist-bands and an amulet a-piece--for the Goddess of Learning, a bear’s claw, and for “Lightning-Beloved,” a little gold box of mystic “spare-me-s” against the blue sword of her tempestuous Lord.... I was much in request for games, and daily beguiled into longer and longer visits; how could one resist Babies who were just being introduced to the joys of childhood? And, when I left the “Inside,” there would be one Baby on my hip--they taught me that, and it is quite easy, I assure you--and one clinging to leg and hand as I walked downstairs.