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Rh beggar. He began with all sorts of irrelevant remarks and then took a desperate plunge into the subject with startling incoherence.

Rashmani briefly remarked: "Are you mad?" Bhavani Charan sat silent revolving in his mind what to say next.

"Look here," he exclaimed, "I don't think I need milk pudding daily with my dinner."

"Who told you?" said Rashmani sharply.

"The doctor says it's very bad for biliousness."

"The doctor's a fool!"

"But I'm sure that rice agrees with me better than your luchis. They are too indigestible."

"I've never seen the least sign of indigestion in you. You have been accustomed to them all your life!"

Bhavani Charan was ready enough to make sacrifices, but there his passage was barred. Butter might rise in price, but the number of his luchis never diminished. Milk was quite enough for him at his midday meal, but curds also had to be supplied because that was the family tradition. Rashmani could not have borne seeing him sit down to his meal, if curds were not supplied. Therefore all his attempts to make a breach in his daily provisions, through which the fanning foreign woman might enter, were an utter failure.