'Don't swear,' said Scott, lazily; 'it's too late to change your carriage; and we'll divide the ice.' 'What are you doing here?' said the policeman. 'Lent to the Madras Government, same as you. By Jove, it's a bender of a night! Are you taking any of your men down?' 'A dozen. Suppose I'll have to superintend relief distributions. Didn't know you were under orders too.' 'I didn't till after I left you last night. Raines had the news first. My orders came this morning. McEuan relieved me at four, and I got off at once. Shouldn't wonder if it wouldn't be a good thing--this famine--if we come through it alive.' 'Jimmy ought to put you and me to work together,' said Martyn; and then, after a pause: 'My sister's here.' 'Good business,' said Scott, heartily. 'Going to get off at Umballa, I suppose, and go up to Simla. Who'll she stay with there?' 'No-o; that's just the trouble of it. She's going down with me.' Scott sat bolt upright under the oil lamp as the train jolted past Tarn-Taran station. 'What! You don't mean you couldn't afford--' 'Oh, I'd have scraped up the money somehow.' 'You might have come to me, to begin with,' said Scott, stiffly; 'we aren't altogether strangers.' 'Well, you needn't be stuffy about it. I might, but--you don't know my sister. I've been explaining and exhorting and entreating and commanding and all the rest of it all day--lost my temper since seven this morning, and haven't got it back yet--but she wouldn't hear of any compromise, A woman's entitled to travel with her husband if she wants to, and William says she's on the same footing. You see, we've been together all our lives, more or less, since my people died. It isn't as if she were an ordinary sister.' 'All the sisters I've ever heard of would have stayed where they were well off.' 'She's as clever as a man, confound her,' Martyn went on. 'She broke up the bungalow over my head while I was talking at her. Settled the whole _subchiz_ [outfit] in three hours--servants, horses, and all. I didn't get my orders till nine. 'Jimmy Hawkins won't be pleased,' said Scott. 'A famine's no place for a woman.' 'Mrs. Jim--I mean Lady Jim's in camp with him. At any rate, she says she will look after my sister. William wired down to her on her own responsibility, asking if she could come, and knocked the ground from under me by showing me her answer.' Scott laughed aloud. 'If she can do that she can take care of herself, and Mrs. Jim won't let her run into any mischief. There aren't many women, sisters or wives, who would walk into a famine with their eyes open. It isn't as if she didn't know what these things mean. She was through the Jaloo cholera last year.' The train stopped at Amritsar, and Scott went back to the ladies' compartment, immediately behind their carriage. William, a cloth riding-cap on her curls, nodded affably. 'Come in and have some tea,' she said. 'Best thing in the world for heat-apoplexy.'