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replied: "I get a dinner of
some kind every day, but the Goddess of Plenty keeps behind the
scenes. Now that the goddess herself has appeared, it matters little if
the dinner lags behind."
He was just as emphatic in his manners as he was in his public
speaking. He had no hesitation and seemed to be accustomed to occupy,
unchallenged, his chosen seat. He claimed the right to intimacy so
confidently, that the blame would seem to belong to those who should
dispute it.
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."

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."