"Back in the days of the bygone summer the little soldanella plant spread its leaves wide and flat on the ground to drink in the sun-rays; and it kept them stored in the root through the winter. Then spring came and stirred its pulses even below the snow-shroud. And as it sprouted, warmth was given out in such strange measure that it thawed a little dome of the snow above its head. Higher and higher it grew, and always above it rose the bell of air till the flower-bud formed safely within it; and at last the icy covering of the air-bell gave way and let the blossom through into the sunshine, the crystalline texture of its mauve petals sparkling like the snow itself, as if it bore the traces of the fight through which it had come. "And the fragile things ring an echo in our hearts that none of the jewel-like flowers nestled in the warm turf on the slopes below could waken. We love to see the impossible done, and so does God." These were the sentences which we read together. To the South Indian imagination Alpine snow is something quite inconceivable; but the picture on the cover and snow-scene photographs helped, and the Indian mind is ever quick to apprehend the spiritual, so the booklet did its work. We have two seasons here, the wet and the dry. The dry is subdivided into hot, hotter, and hottest; but the wet stands alone. It is a time when the country round Dohnavur is swamp or lake according to the level of the ground; and we do not expect visitors--the heavy bullock-carts sink in the mud and make the way too difficult. If a letter had come just then asking us to send for the baby, we should certainly have tried to go; but no letter came, and it was then, when everything said, "Impossible," that suddenly all resistance gave way and the grandfather said: "Let her go to the Christians." [Illustration: PAKIUM AND NAVEENA.] We were sitting round the dinner-table one wet evening, thinking of nothing more exciting than the flying and creeping creatures which insisted upon drowning themselves in our soup, when the jingle of bullock-bells made us look at each other incredulously; and then, without waiting to wonder who it was, we all ran out and met Rukma running in from the wet darkness. "It's it! it's it!" she cried, and danced into the dining-room, decorum thrown to the pools in the compound. "Look at it!" and we saw a bundle in her arms. And it howled.