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 sister, Saibalini, he soothed his young wife to needful rest when she had cried her eyes out in grief, and persuaded even her mother to take needful food when she had worn herself out by watching. Sirish had never been a favourite of Hemlata's mother, but unreasoning prejudice and pride lift and disappear like dark mists when thoughts of death and bereavement oppress the heart. Hemlata's mother, broken down by watching and grief, was no longer the proud woman who had looked down on the "beggar boy." It was in that boy that she found help and consolation when help was needed; it was on his strong arm that she leaned when she was tottering; it was on his resource that she relied when the greatest grief of her life awaited the prostrated woman.

Night and day he attended and worked as her own son, if she had one, could not have done. And late in the night, when the patient was asleep, it was Sirish who brought her some refreshments, made her bed, and persuaded her to take some needful repose. If a tear would then trickle down the withered cheeks of the old woman it was the tear of repentance. "Ye are my children," the old, broken-down woman would say to Sirish and Saibalini, holding them close to her. "Ye are to me as my own Hemlata. But I have suffered much in life, and have sometimes forgotten."

The chamber of sickness and sorrow had its lessons for the young as for the old. The days and nights passed in that chamber drew Sirish perhaps closer to the heart of his wife. She saw the deep tenderness of his soul as she had not perhaps seen it before; she read thoughts in his deep, soft eyes which she had not understood so long. And when, in moments of her weakness and sorrow for her father, he would take her