Page:Stories of Bengalee life - Prabhat Kumar Mukerji.pdf/171



ELL-EQUIPPED with warm clothing, Kumud Nath, his wife and two-year-old boy, Khoka, set out for Simla on the 1st of December. The day for the journey had been fixed by the most exact astrological reckoning. And when fortune proved adverse, no one could say at what point the calculations went wrong. To this husband and wife the journey proved to be the heaviest misfortune that had ever befallen them.

Having been for some years subject to malarial fever, Kumud Nath had become reduced to skin and bone. The doctor advised him to spend some months in a cold climate. The name of Kumud Babu's wife was Giribala. She was born in the Simla hills, and had lived there some years, as her father, the late Kali Kanta Mitra, had worked there. She now urged her husband to go to Simla.

Kumud Nath exclaimed—"Ruination! Go to Simla in the cold?"