sticks but with gram.”

 

                                                  Punjabi Proverb.

After marriage arrives a reaction, sometimes a big, sometimes a little one; but it comes sooner or later, and must be tided over by both parties if they desire the rest of their lives to go with the current.

 

In the case of the Cusack-Bremmils this reaction did not set in till the third year after the wedding. Bremmil was hard to hold at the best of times; but he was a beautiful husband until the baby died and Mrs. Bremmil wore black, and grew thin, and mourned as if the bottom of the universe had fallen out. Perhaps Bremmil ought to have comforted her. He tried to do so, I think; but the more he comforted the more Mrs. Bremmil grieved, and, consequently, the more uncomfortable Bremmil grew. The fact was that they both needed a tonic¹. And they got it. Mrs. Bremmil can afford to laugh now, but it was no laughing matter to her at the time.

 

You see, Mrs. Hauksbee appeared on the horizon; and where she existed was fair chance of trouble. At Simla her bye-name was the “Stormy Petrel.” She had won that title five times to my own certain knowledge. She was a little, brown, thin, almost skinny, woman, with big, rolling, violet-blue eyes, and the sweetest manners in the world. You had only to mention her name at afternoon teas for every woman in the room to rise up, and call her—well—NOT blessed. She was clever, witty², brilliant, and sparkling beyond most of her kind; but possessed³ of many devils of malice⁴ and mischievousness⁵. She could be nice, though, even to her own sex. But that is another story.

 

Bremmil went off at score after the baby's death and the general discomfort⁶ that followed, and Mrs. Hauksbee

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