And Eva thought it heart-rending, this living on a rix-dollar a week, with four children, in a house which let in the rain, so that it was impossible to cook there. "Let me look after your second little daughter, Saina," said Eva, a day or two after. Saina hesitated, smiled: she would rather not, but dared not say so. "Yes," Eva insisted, "let her come to me: you will see her all day long; she will sleep in cook's room; I shall provide her clothes; and she will have nothing to do but to see that my room is kept tidy. You can teach her that." "So young still, mem-sahib; only just ten." "No, no," Eva insisted. "Let me do this to help you. What's her name?" "Mina, mem-sahib." "Mina? That won't do," said Eva. "That's the seamstress' name. We'll find another for her." Saina brought the child, looking very shy, with a streak of moist rice-powder on her forehead; and Eva dressed her prettily. She was a very attractive little thing, with a soft brown skin covered with a downy bloom, and looked charming in her new clothes. She sedulously piled the sarongs in the press, with fragrant white flowers between the layers: the flowers were changed for fresh ones daily. For a joke, because she arranged the flowers so prettily, Eva called her Melati, after the East-Indian jasmine. Two days later, Saina crouched down before her njonja. "What is it, Saina?" Might the little girl come back to the damp cottage in the compound? Saina asked. "Why?" asked Eva, in amazement. "Isn't your little girl happy here?" Yes, she was, said Saina, bashfully, but she preferred the cottage. The mem-sahib was very kind, but little Mina would rather be in the cottage. Eva was angry and let the child go home, with the new clothes, which Saina took away with her as a matter of course. "Why wasn't the child allowed to stay?" Eva asked of the latta cook. Cook at first dared not say. "Come, cook, why wasn't she?" asked Eva, insisting. "Because the mem-sahib called the little girl Melati.... Names of flowers and fruits ... are given only ... to dancing-girls," explained the cook, as though expounding a mystery. "But why didn't Saina tell me?" asked Eva, greatly incensed. "I had not the least idea of that!" "Too shy," said cook, by way of excusing Saina. "Beg pardon, mem-sahib." These were trivial incidents in the daily domestic life, little episodes of her housekeeping; but they made her feel sore, because she felt behind them as it were a wall that always existed between her and the people and things of India. She did not know the country, she would never know the people. And the minor disappointment of the episodes filled her with the same soreness as the greater disappointment of her illusions, because her life, amid the daily trivialities of her housekeeping, was itself becoming more and more trivial. CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE