"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."
My husband, at this, broke his silence. "You must confess," said
he, "that you have as immense an attraction for foreign medicine
as the earth has for meteors. You have three shelves in your
sitting-room full of..."
Sandip Babu broke in: "Do you know what they are? They are the
punitive police. They come, not because they are wanted, but
because they are imposed on us by the rule of this modern age,
exacting fines and-inflicting injuries."
My husband could not bear exaggerations, and I could see he
disliked this. But all ornaments are exaggerations. They are
not made by God, but by man. Once I remember in defence of some
untruth of mine I said to my husband: "Only the trees and beasts
and birds tell unmitigated truths, because these poor things have
not the power to invent. In this men show their superiority to
the lower creatures, and women beat even men. Neither is a
profusion of ornament unbecoming for a woman, nor a profusion of
untruth."
As I came out into the passage leading to the zenana I found my
sister-in-law, standing near a window overlooking the reception
rooms, peeping through the venetian shutter.
"You here?" I asked in surprise.
"Eavesdropping!" she replied.
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