Pushpam is the youngest.  Term after term finds her leaving the village, jogging the thirty miles of dust-white road to the town, spending the night in the crowded discomfort of the third class compartment K marked for “Indian females.”  Vacation after vacation finds her reversing the order of journeying, plunging from the twentieth century life of college into the village’s mediaeval calm.  There is no lack of occupation—­letters to write for the unlearned of the older generation to their children far afield, clerks and writers and pastors in distant parts; there are children to coach for coming examinations; there are sore eyes to treat, and fevers to reduce.

One Christmas Pushpam returns as usual, yet not as usual, for her capable presence has lost its customary calm.  She is “anxious and troubled about many things,” or is it about one?

Social unrest has dominated college thinking this last term, focussing its avenging eyes upon that Dowry System which works debt and eventual ruin in many a South Indian home.  Pushpam has seen the family struggles that have accompanied the marriages of her older sisters; the “cares of the world” that have pressed until all the joy of days that should have been festal was lost in the counting out of rupees.  In neighbor homes she has seen rejoicing at the birth of a son, as the bringer of prosperity, and grief, hardly concealed, at the adversity of a daughter’s advent.  Unchristian?  Yes; but not for the lack of the milk of human kindness; rather from the incubus of an evil social system, inherited from Hindu ancestors.

Pushpam’s father is growing old; lands and jewels have shrunk.  Married sons and daughters are already gathering and saving for the future of their own young daughters.  Three thousand rupees are demanded of Pushpam in the marriage market.  The thought of it is marring the peace of her father’s face and breaking his sleep of nights.  But Pushpam has news to impart, “Father, I have something to say.  It will hurt you, but I must speak.  It is the first time that I, your daughter, have even disobeyed your wishes, but this time it must be.

“All this college term we girls have been thinking and talking of our marriage system and its evils.  Husbands are bought in the market, and in these war years they, like everything else, are high.  A man thinks not of the girl who will make his home, but of the rupees she will bring to his father’s coffers.  Marriage means not love, but money.  My classmates and I have talked and written and thought.  Now three of us have made one another a solemn promise.  Our parents shall give no dowries for us.  We have no fear of remaining unmarried; we can earn our way as we go and find our happiness in work.  Or if there are men who care for us, and not for the rupees we bring, let them ask for us; we will consider such marriages, but no other.  Do not protest, Father, for our minds are made up.”

[Illustration:  THE NEW DORMITORY AT MADRAS COLLEGE]