an air
of happiness and contentment."

"And do you really believe there is anything in this comfortable faith,
Aunt Flora?"

"Yes, my dear, I have a sincere confidence that my soul, not this
miserable wicked body, will live again, and be given an opportunity of
being better in another world."

"Well, at any rate that is a consoling creed. For my own part, I know
little about Buddhism, but I can see that the Burmans are a religious
people, much given to worship and offerings, and with a good deal of
gaiety in their ceremonies; but, Aunt Flora, although they are
delightfully picturesque, and so merry and cheerful, as a mass they are
terribly pleasure-loving and lazy; no Burman will work if he can help
it; even the women are difficult to get hold of. Mrs. Blake, who is in
the District, told me that her ayah, who never exerted herself, had put
in for a _year's_ holiday and rest."

"But what had that to do with religion, my dear?"

"Just this--that they are as a race too indolant and easy-going to
study any big question, or to take the trouble to think for themselves."

"But what about the hundreds and thousands of holy priests who spend
all their rives in profound meditation? What do you say to that? Come
now."

"I say that they live a life of incorrigible idleness; they have no
need to maintain themselves; they just eat, and sit, and muse;
everything is supplied to them, including their yellow robe and betel
nut. Their religion is selfish."

"Well, well, I'm too stupid to argue, my dear child, my brain is like
cotton wool; but I have my hopes, my sure hopes. Karl is different.
He is cultured, he reads Marx and Hegel, and says we are like cabbages
and have no future; when we go it is as a candle that is blown out.
Oh, here are visitors! What a bore! I shall not appear! Run and tell
the bearer."

"Oh, but these are your own special old friends, Mrs. Vansittart and
Mrs. Dowler. _Do_ let them come in; they will amuse you--poor dears,
you know they always call after dark."

These visitors, friends of former days, were social derelicts, who had,
so to speak, "gone ashore" in Rangoon. One was chained to Burma by
dire poverty and a drunken husband; the other, who had been a wealthy
woman of considerable local importance, was now a childless widow,
supporting herself with difficulty by means of a second-rate
boarding-house. To these old friends, and in many other cases, Mrs.
Krauss had proved a generous an