The sweetmeat-seller dawdled by, pursued even at dawn by his pest of flies. The water-carriers lounged along uttering their monotonous chant, "Any Hindu drinkers? Any Mussulman drinkers?" while in their van, dusky hands stretched out holding metal cups and bowls, from the very shape of which the religion of the owners might be inferred, owners sitting cheek by jowl in third-class compartments with a gulf unfathomable, impassable, between them in this world and the next. The lank yellow dogs crept among the wheels, licking a precarious meal from the grease-boxes. The grey-headed carrion-crows sat in lines on the wire fencing with beaks wide open in unending yawns. Nothing else appeared to mark the passage of time; indeed the absence of hurry on all sides gave the scene a curious unreality to Western eyes, a feeling which was plainly shown in the expression of a young girl who stood alone beside a small pile of luggage. "A new arrival," remarked a tall man in undress uniform, who was leaning against the door of a first-class compartment, and talking to its occupants. "Yes, to judge by complexion and baggage," was the reply. "You'd hardly believe it, but Kate was as trim once; now!--just look at the carriage!" A gay laugh came from behind a perfect barrier of baths, bundles, and bassinettes. "We hadn't four babies to drag about in those days, George, and I can assure Major Marsden that I'm not a bit ashamed of them, or my complexion. George, dear! do for goodness' sake get baby's bottle filled with hot water at the engine; if he doesn't have something to eat he will cry in ten minutes, and then you will have to take him." While George, with the proverbial docility of the Anglo-Indian husband and father, strolled off on his errand, the feminine voice came into view in the shape of a cheerful round little woman with a child in her arms and another clinging to her dress. She looked with interest at the girl on the platform. "She seems lonely, doesn't she?" Major Marsden frowned. He had been thinking the same thing, though he was fond of posing as a man devoid of sentiment; a not unusual affectation with those who are conscious of an over-soft heart. "I wonder what she is doing here," he said, kicking his heels viciously against the iron step of the carriage. A twinkle of mischief lurked in his companion's blue eyes as she replied: "'What are you doing here, my pretty maid?' 'Going a-marrying, sir,' she said. Can't you see the square wooden box which betrays the wedding cake?" "Then if you want to do a Christian act,--and you ladies love aggressive charity--just step out of your car as _dea ex machine_, and take her home again. India is no place for Englishwomen to be married in." "Now don't go on! I know quite well what you are going to say, and I agree,--theoretically. India is an ogre, eating us up body and soul; ruining our health, our tempers, our morals, our manners, our babies."