getting stolen. We'll find him without the trouble of looking for him."
Binodini.—"But he may be anxiously wondering what's happened to your precious self! Let's go and relieve his mind."
There was a huge Banyan tree near the lake with a masonry platform round its trunk. Here Vihari had unpacked his hamper and was found boiling a kettle over an oil stove. He welcomed his guests, seated them on the raised platform, and handed them cups of tea and helps of sweetmeats on little metal saucers.
"It's a mercy Vihari Babu thought of bringing his hamper," said Binodini, "or what would have become of Mahin Babu without his morning tea?"
Mahendra felt the tea to be a god-send, nevertheless he said: "Vihari always will overdo things. We come for a rough-and-tumble picnic, hut he needs must bring along all the home comforts. That spoils all the fun."
"Pass back the cup then," laughed Vihari, "I won't stand in the way of your enjoying as much empty fun as you like."
It was getting late, yet there was no sign of the servants. All sorts of materials for a feast began to come out of Vihari's hamper; rice, pulses and vegetables, and various cooking spices put up in little bottles.
"You put us to shame, Vihari Babu," said Binodini in unaffected admiration; "your house has no mistress, yet how did you learn all this?"
"Sheer necessity taught me," said Vihari. "If I don't look after myself there's nobody else to do it." Vihari said this in the lightest possible manner, but Binodini's grave eyes showered pity upon him.
Then Vihari and Binodini set to work at the cooking. Asha feebly and hesitatingly offered to help, but Vihari would not let her. The lazy Mahendra made no offer at all but, with his back against the trunk of the Banyan tree, and one leg crossed over the other, he sat watching the dance of the sunbeams on the quivering leaves.
When the cooking was nearly done, Binodini said: "It's not likely, Mahin Babu, that you'll be able to finish counting the leaves. Hadn't you better go and have your bath?" By this time the servants had arrived. There had been a break-down on the way which had detained them. It was past noon.
After the meal somebody proposed a game of cards under the tree. But Mahendra would not give ear to the suggestion, and dozed off in the shade. Asha retired into the house for her siesta. Binodini with a touch at the upper fold of her Sari, as if to pull it over into a veil, said: "I'd better be going in too."
"What d'you want to go inside for?" objected Vihari. "Let's have a chat. Tell me all about your village home."
The hot afternoon breeze every now and then rustled through the leaves, and a koil cooed out of the thicket which fringed the lake. Binodini went on with the story of her childhood, of her father and mother, of her playmates. And as she became absorbed in her recital, her half-drawn veil slipped off unperceived, and the aggressive glow of youth which generally gleamed from her countenance was toned down by these reminiscences of her early days. And when the keen ironical glance, which usually roused such misgivings in the mind of the wary Vihari, came so strangely softened through the long dark moist eyelashes, he seemed to behold before him quite a different person. In the centre of the halo of her outward brilliance a heart honeyed with true feeling could still be discerned, her womanhood had not yet been scorched to the core by the arid frivolity on the surface. "Binodini may look like a light-minded girl," thought Vihari, "but I seem to catch a glimpse of the vestal virgin within." He sighed as he realised how little human beings could know even of themselves, and how the immediate circumstances brought out one particular aspect of a character which to the world at large appeared for the time to represent the whole personality.
He would not let Binodini's story come to an end, but kept it going with his questions. Binodini had never found such a sympathetic listener to the tale of her childhood's recollections, nor had she ever talked so intimately with one of the opposite sex. To-day the overflow of her natural feelings which accompanied her simple unaffected narration had on her mind the cleansing effect of a bath in a sacred stream.
It was five o'clock before Mahendra slept off the fatigue of his untimely awakening. "Let's be off!" he said grumpily.
"Would it matter if we waited till the cool of the evening?" suggested Binodini.
