A new little settler has lately sought the shelter of this Raj, a six-year-old Baby in self-protective exile from her own Estate. Under local law she succeeds as the only unmarried “female” to a considerable inheritance, and as a consequence all around her, grandmothers and sisters included, are interested in her death. They have been drugging her, and she has been brought into headquarters under Police guard. I found her in a wretched house set down in a swamp, and furnished with a hard plank-bed and a box. “Lotus-born,” that is her name, is a miserable shrimp of a Baby, arms like sticks, and a plaintive long-suffering little face, like a cry for help sounding in my ears to this day. She was very ill indeed, burning with malarial fever, and aching, she said, in every limb. She lay on the hard “_takht-posh_,” and beside her sat her nurse, another baby, eight years old. She sat like a frog, legs crunched up, and her nursing consisted in giving the sufferer a loving pinch every now and then, murmuring, “There! that makes it better.” And the six-year-old, in a monotonous little voice which struggled after cheeriness, would answer, “Yes! Oh! yes.” I found that the Nurse had tied herself to “Lotus-born” in friendship by a ceremony peculiar to this part of the country. Two tanks are dug, contiguous, and the children make a play with fishes and boats, floating them in the water, and offering rice and feastings on the grass. Quaint songs are sung. “Who is worshipping the water with garlands of flowers while the sun is overhead?” “It is I, chaste and virtuous, lucky sister of a Brother. May I have sons who will not die.” But “Lotus-born” lived not long enough to find fulfilment of her prayer. Better nursing came too late, and the petals of the Lotus curled together in eternal sleep. * * * * * The mother of “Lightning-Beloved” is in great spirits this morning. The son-in-law elect was ill, and I had pointed the moral about letting children get past baby troubles before you betroth them; it is so one lessens the risk of widowhood. “Well! at any rate,” she said, “you should be pleased with me. Your ‘Lightning-Beloved’ is not yet a widow. I saved her from being _born_ a widow.” This was startling, but I waited explanation. “When ‘Lightning-Beloved’ was on the way to life,” she said, “there came a Guru from a far country who told my Guru of a game the women play there. Two women who are friends, and are about at the same time to be dowered with the life-gift, betroth two balls of flowers. If both children are of the same sex there is no result of the ceremony, but if of opposite sexes and one die the other is a widow.... She may even be _born_ a widow.” “But you would not hold to that?” “Where it is the custom who can escape? Yet ‘Lightning-Beloved’ was not born a widow; for this I should have praise from the Miss Sahib.” “But it is not your custom.” “What matter? I should have praise. She is not a widow!”