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110
AN AMERICAN GIRL IN INDIA

the time is responsible for. It ruins the temper and breaks up the home, and yet nobody takes the trouble to alter it. The frightful recrimination it leads to between husband and wife is only one of its results. Say you and your husband are going out to dine. You neither of you can remember at the last minute whether the time is half an hour behind or half an hour ahead of what it ought to be. Now, being a woman, you know that nothing annoys a hostess more than her guests arriving half an hour too early, just when she's combing out her back hair, preparatory to twisting it up into a fascinating knot somewhere on top. The sound of early arrivals when she is only at that early stage of her toilet flusters her, and if a woman gets flustered before she begins to receive her guests that dinner is just doomed to failure right away. So the wife going out to dinner, knowing how she would feel herself if guests arrived half an hour too soon, insists upon her husband waiting half an hour before they start. Then, of course, they arrive half an hour too late, and the husband as they creep apologetically into the room full of angry, hungry people, whispers, 'I told you so,' and, of course, that upsets his wife, and she'd cry straight away if she dared. As for the hostess, with the soup getting cold and the other guests getting violent with hunger, she's got ruffled long ago. So that dinner, owing to the odd half hour either way, doesn't get a chance. Of course, you do have luck sometimes, and hit upon the exact time right there, but the chances are about ten to one against.