"Yes, but the three medicines which this poor fellow most requires are air, cleanliness, and quiet?" cried Isa Dás, who was feeling the pulse of his patient. "If he can have these but for one night, he may struggle through this attack; but if not—" he interrupted himself, for there was the girl with the wretched baby again trying to force herself back into the room. * * If the sight of a zenana visitor be at all a novelty, she is likely to be followed by an escort of such children even into the zenanas of the comparatively wealthy. It is not strange to see amongst them some baby covered with small-pox. The wife, happily, was not quite destitute of common sense. She saw that the doctor knew his business, and the life of the breadwinner for herself, her children, two widowed aunts, and a mother was too precious for her not to be anxious to do what she could to save it. The obtrusive girl was promptly expelled in a fashion which sent her as well as the baby roaring down the staircase. A noisy hen with her brood of chickens was next turned out, and a great many dirty rags carried away. The air was able to come in tolerably freely through the square-shaped opening which might be called a window, though it had never held a pane of glass. Poor Natthu was quite unconscious of what was passing around him, but he was sensible of the relief given by something like quiet, and bathing his brow somewhat lessened the terrible pain in his head. His wife assiduously fanned him with a small straw hand-punkah, and he drank in the fresh air almost as eagerly as he did the cooling medicine held by Isa Dás to his lips. "What will his poor mother and aunts say when they hear of this dreadful illness?" exclaimed the wife. "He was quite well and driving the buffalo at the mill when they left here early with the children to go to the melá at P—," mentioning a village a few miles distant. "Little they knew that Piru's father * would be lying in such a state before night." * It is considered indecorous for a wife to mention the name of her husband, or a man that of his bibi. Thankful was Isa Dás that all these relatives had not been present to add their numbers to the crowd, and their voices to the noise. He was glad to hear from the bibi that the party intended to sleep at P—, so that the poor oilman had some chance of a quiet night. Ere long, some improvement took place; the sick man's pulse beat less wildly, and he ceased to cry out, as he had been doing in his delirium, that demons were crowding around him and smothering him to death. "Praise be to the Most Merciful! He is better already," said the doctor. "Cheer up," he continued kindly to the wife, who was shampooing her husband's feet, "if he be but kept quiet, I hope that he may live to do many a good day's work for you yet."