"Certainly. It's my job."
"But you are paid for it," she remarked vindictively.
"One must live, though perhaps in my case you don't see the necessity. Anyway I get no extra pay, so it's not for pure love of gain!"
"How do you mean? Weren't you ordered to do the work?"
"As it happens, no. I volunteered."
"Then where would you have been if you hadn't?"
"At Simla perhaps, or somewhere away from the famine area in my own province."
"Then you don't belong to this part?"
"No, I've been lent."