The Rains Came by Louis Bromfield

In a long novel of India there is a brief but important episode involving two old missionary ladies. The elder, an engaging old battleax, muses as she tucks the younger and sillier into bed that her friend had never understood why they had been driven out of the school where they had, as young girls, been teaching. Ironically, the nice old grim one is killed in a flood while the silly one remains to pester everybody. ~ Marion Zimmer Bradley