FOURMAMMA and newly promoted Major Ferguson were married quietly three months after Papa’s death. The only people in the least shocked were the natives, whose notions of the proper disposal of widows ranged all the way from bestowing them upon the husband’s male next of kin, to throwing them alive on his funeral pyre. In this case the killing was done in the name of the goddess Sati, who appeared to be later wife of Siva the Destroyer, but who actually was Durga who in turn was Kali, whom I hated with all my heart.
None of the ladies of the station hinted that Mamma had remarried in undue haste. They knew not the day that their own spouses would be carried off, in which case they wished to strike while the iron was hot. I had not the least objection to the match, since I had been taught y
