I have said the quarrel was in three generations--daughter, mother, grandmother--and, of course, like all Raj quarrels, it had been made by a third person to suit his own purposes. My connection with it was an attempt at Peacemaking, when the daughter was about fifteen, and could speak for herself. Not soon shall I forget my journeys ... flat, mud-coloured country, with mud huts rising out of the ground, as if you had pinched up the earth into hiding holes ... mud-coloured humans like detached pieces of their own houses herding undersized goats, or urging miserable beasts and an unwilling plough over the baked earth: little vegetation, but here and there a palm-tree, standing straight and solitary against the heat-hazed, pewter-coloured sky, as if even Nature had need here to throw herself on God.... This was before the rain. In a week all was changed, the road was under water, and I had a weird, mysterious drive through the rivers of streets. The suspicion of a moon was overhead, and a glorious fresh breeze wandered the world. Silently we drove, _swish, swish_, fifteen miles of--a call to secrecy, as if all the world had finger on lip--“_hush, hush_” ... the trees said it, the feathery bamboos whispering head against head, and the soft gray clouds, and that veiled moon, and that wistful breeze, and those muddy streets, they all said “_Hush!_” ... even the bare legs of the saises, as they ran by the carriage, seemed to say the same. “_Hush!_” ... All the world was slipping into a delicious forgetfulness and oblivion, and there was none to see, none save I, thrilling with sympathy, and that palm or two against the horizon looking on stiff-necked and aloof as if refusing to have part or lot in this flirtation of Earth and Cloudland. I did not mind the palms. I hugged myself with the delicious feeling of being in the secret of the world-things. Once or twice in our pathless journey we passed through a village, so close that I could reach a hand and scratch a soft pink nose of cow or buffalo at its tethering. The peasant house-holder lay stretched in his winding-sheet asleep on the unguarded threshold. No reason for worry or watch-dog when all your wealth is in dear Mother-Earth, guarded by the floating fluid come down from Heaven for that same purpose. How good will be the rice crop after this soaking he knows full well, that slow-minded one who sleeps so blissfully. But it is after midnight, and we have arrived. And next morning there are secrets again, but of a different kind, in the air, and my work is cut out for me.