her risk her nose by discovery. Neither of them being altogether in earnest, and each anxiously awaiting symptoms of capitulation in the other. "I don't care for your words, Lâlâ-_ji_," she retorted in answer to his abuse. "We women have to eat curses, aye! and blows too; but we get our own way for all that. I mean to have the bangles, so the sooner you unstomach them the better." Her black brows met in determination as Shunker consigned her and all her female ancestors to unspeakable torments. "If you say much more I'll have the evil eye cast on that sickly Nuttu of yours. Mai-Bishen does it. You take seven hairs--" "Be silent, she-devil!" shouted the Lâlâ turning green. "What ails you to give the mind freedom on such things? Lo! I have been good to you, Kirpo, and the boy there,--would mine were like him!" Kirpo caught the child in her arms, covering him with kisses as she held him to her broad brown breast. "Thine! Pooh! thou art a poor body and a poor spirit, Shunker. Afraid for all thy big belly; afraid of Raby-_sahib!_ Look you, I will go to him: nay, I will go to his _mem_, who loves to see the black women, and she will make you give me the bangles." Now Shunker's evil disposition partook of the nature of an am[oe]ba. That is to say, no sooner did a suggestion of food dawn upon it, than straightway the undefined mass of spite shot out a new limb in that direction. Kirpo's words had this effect upon him. After all why should she not go to see the _mem?_ How angry the _shaitan_ would be if he knew that his, Shunker's mistress, had had an interview with the stuck-up English girl. What business, too, had she to bring her husband money when her father was bankrupt? Rare sport indeed to chuckle over when Raby put on his airs. "By the holy water of Gunga!" he cried, "thou shalt go, Kirpo, as my wife. No one will know. Silks and satins, Kirpo, and sheets held up for thee to scuttle through so that none may see! Aha! And I have to take off my shoes at the door, curse him!" He lay back and chuckled at the bare idea of the petty, concealed insult of which no one but himself would know. Kirpo looked at him in contemptuous dislike. "If I was a bad woman like thy friends in the bazaar I would not go, for they say she is easy to deceive and kind; but I am not bad. It is you who are bad. So I will go; but with the bangles, and with the boy too, in a _khim-khâb_ (cloth of gold) coat. 'Twill be as thy son. Lâlâ-_ji_, remember, so thou wouldst not have him look a beggar." Her shrill laughter rang through the empty house, making an old woman glance upwards from the lower court. "Kirpo should go home," muttered the hag, "or she will lose her nose like Dhundei when they let her husband out of gaol by mistake. A grand mistake for poor Dhunnu! oho! oho!"