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THE WRECK

183

reading young lady to show how she can endure being crossed in love!"

"I chose this place for a quiet talk with Hem," Annada Babu hastened to explain. His intention was to protect his daughter from Jogendra's unfeeling taunts but his words were capable of the interpretation that he had dragged Hem up to the roof to engage her in conversation.

"Can't one talk just as well at the tea-table?" cried Jogendra. "You're just encouraging Hem in her fool- ishness, dad. You'll drive me out of the house alto- gether at this rate."

"Haven't you had your tea yet, dad?" asked Hem- nalini, conscience-stricken.

Jogendra. "Tea isn't like poetic fancy; it won't rain down on one of its own volition from the sunset glow in the evening sky. The cups won't fill them- selves and come up to you while you sit in a corner of the roof! I need hardly tell you that!"

To cover Hemnalini's confusion Annada Babu in- terposed hastily. "I've decided not to have any tea to-day."

Jogendra "Why, dad, are you going to turn an out-and-out ascetic? What's to happen to me, then? I can't live on air."

Annada. "Oh, no, it's not a question of asceticism. I didn't sleep well last night so I thought of trying the effect of a little abstinence."

Truth to tell, in the course of former conversations with Hemnalini the apparition of a brimming cup of tea had often floated before Annada Babu's mental vision but this had not been so to-day. Since Hemna- lini had at last regained her normal tone, her father and she had been having a really intimate talk in the privacy of the housetop and had sounded depths not hitherto reached. The effort of moving might have had a disastrous effect and have scared away like

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