vile man, or rather it happened to be a woman. That woman made me feel absolutely murderous. She roused all my most prehistoric barbaric instincts, and I wanted to throw her down like they did Jezebel of old. That may sound strong, but you would not have said it was a bit too strong if you had heard that woman. Why is it that a foolish woman cannot keep her mouth shut? If you do happen to have had the bad luck to be born a fool, I should have thought the only thing to do would have been to keep quiet about it. Lots of people are fools, but they are just wise enough to know it and hush it up, and so they get along all right and nobody ever discovers that they really are fools. But, unfortunately, the majority of fools never discover that they are fools, and so they talk and give themselves away. That woman in the Jumma Musjid was a fool and one of the worst type. She thought herself clever. She was with an unhappy man, who was evidently ashamed of her but had not the courage to shut her up. Perhaps he was her husband, which would explain it. She was sitting just behind, so it was impossible for us to escape from her inanities.
'Oh look, Decky dear, isn't he sweet?' she lisped ecstatically, leaning over the back of Berengaria's chair. 'Is he a Sikh or a Nepalese?'
'Who do you mean?' asked 'Decky dear' wearily—at least I think it was 'Decky' she called him. It sounded like that, and she probably thought it clever.
'Oh, Decky, how can you be so stupid? As if
