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Dingihami died two days after giving birth to the twins. Silindu had a sister called Karlinahami, who lived in a house at the other end of the village. Misfortune had fallen upon her, the misfortune so common in the life of a jungle village. Her husband had died of fever two months before: a month later she bore a child which lived but two weeks. When Dingihami died, Silindu brought her to his hut to bring up his two children. Her hut was abandoned to the jungle. When the next rains fell the mud walls crumbled away, the tattered roof fell in, the jungle crept forward into the compound and over the ruined walls; and when Punchi Menika was two years old, only a little mound in the jungle marked the place where Karlinahami's house had stood.

Karlinahami was a short, dark, stumpy woman, with large impassive eyes set far apart from one another, flat broad cheeks, big breasts, and thick legs. Unlike her brother she was always busy, sweeping the house and compound, fetching water from the tank, cooking, and attending to the children. Very soon after she came to Silindu's house she began to talk and think of the children as though she had borne them herself. Like her brother she was slow and sparing of speech; and her eyes often had in them the look, so often in his, as if she were watching something far away in the distance. She very rarely took much part in the interminable gossip of the other village women when they met at the tank or outside their huts. This gossip is always connected with their husbands and children, food and quarrels.