I was in terror lest Sandip Babu should take me for a shrinking, old-fashioned bundle of inanity. But, for the life of me, I could not sparkle in repartees such as might charm or dazzle him. What could have possessed me, I angrily wondered, to appear before him in such an absurd way? I was about to retire when dinner was over, but Sandip Babu, as bold as ever, placed himself in my way. "You must not," he said, "think me greedy. It was not the dinner that kept me staying on, it was your invitation. If you were to run away now, that would not be playing fair with your guest." If he had not said these words with a careless ease, they would have been out of tune. But, after all, he was such a great friend of my husband that I was like his sister. While I was struggling to climb up this high wave of intimacy, my husband came to the rescue, saying: "Why not come back to us after you have taken your dinner?" "But you must give your word," said Sandip Babu, "before we let you off." "I will come," said I, with a slight smile. "Let me tell you," continued Sandip Babu, "why I cannot trust you. Nikhil has been married these nine years, and all this while you have eluded me. If you do this again for another nine years, we shall never meet again." I took up the spirit of his remark as I dropped my voice to reply: "Why even then should we not meet?" "My horoscope tells me I am to die early. None of my forefathers have survived their thirtieth year. I am now twenty-seven." He knew this would go home. This time there must have been a shade of concern in my low voice as I said: "The blessings of the whole country are sure to avert the evil influence of the stars." "Then the blessings of the country must be voiced by its goddess. This is the reason for my anxiety that you should return, so that my talisman may begin to work from today." Sandip Babu had such a way of taking things by storm that I got no opportunity of resenting what I never should have permitted in another. "So," he concluded with a laugh, "I am going to hold this husband of yours as a hostage till you come back." As I was coming away, he exclaimed: "May I trouble you for a trifle?" I started and turned round. "Don't be alarmed," he said. "It's merely a glass of water. You might have noticed that I did not drink any water with my dinner. I take it a little later." Upon this I had to make a show of interest and ask him the reason. He began to give the history of his dyspepsia. I was told how he had been a martyr to it for seven months, and how, after the usual course of nuisances, which included different allopathic and homoeopathic misadventures, he had obtained the most wonderful results by indigenous methods. "Do you know," he added, with a smile, "God has built even my infirmities in such a manner that they yield only under the bombardment of __Swadeshi__ pills."