“I will go to the fort,” she said, as she rose from her seat; “I have not been there for a week.” “Is not the weather too hot for you?” asked Harold, glancing up from his desk; “the sun has now a good deal of power.” “The sun is hot, but there is at least breathing-space in the fort,” said Alicia, who disliked the cramped accommodation of the crowded bungalow. “I am sorry that I cannot procure for you Kripá Dé’s escort to-day,” observed Harold. “I do not want it; I know the way now; I can go by myself,” said Alicia. She did not choose to set Robin smiling again at any weakness of hers. When once in her doli, Alicia repented of the passing peevishness into which she feared that she had been betrayed. “It is a wrong, a mean thing,” thought the young wife, “to feel cross because others take small worries more patiently than I do. Robin is right: it is better to laugh than to cry over tiny troubles. A poor missionary I must be, indeed, if my fortitude cannot stand a hot room or the stinging of a musquito. Oh for a calm, firm, quiet spirit!” Alicia had almost forgotten her headache before she reached the fort. For once the court-yard was clear of cattle, and the dogs seemed to understand that the white visitor was not a bear to be baited; they did not even growl. Alicia, not unmarked but unmolested, made her way up the dark stair to the women’s apartments. Again there was the interchange of saláms, again was the charpai dragged out and spread, again Alicia attempted to read, and again had the young missionary the vexation of being interrupted by irrelevant questions. As a resource from such tiresome and often puzzling inquiries, Alicia again sang that bhajan of which native women never seem to be weary, a chord in their hearts being touched by that verse which may be thus rendered, though its melody suffers by the translation,— “In this world happiness never can be found; It is as water-drops spilt on the ground.” “These women have hearts, if one could but reach them,” thought Alicia, as she saw tears rise to the eyes of a bibi. “They feel that the world is fleeting and vain. Oh, when shall we persuade them to raise their eyes to another, whose joys will never pass away! I am like one trying to open an iron door which is locked, and of which I have not the key. Oh, my Lord, do for me what I am unable to do! Make a clear way for thy feeble, unworthy child, and give her courage to enter and patience to persevere.” The young widow Premi approached with a fat heavy boy of some two years old sitting astride on her hip, after the Indian fashion of carrying children. The slight frame of the girl seemed unsuited for supporting the weight; she was looking weary and ill.