Part 18 (1/2)

'Do, duckies. But mind, no copying of them by durzies in the veranda.

They're all Paris things--Coulter's--and you know he doesn't copy well, does he? Oh, dear! here are the men--they always come too soon, don't they? So glad to have had even a little chat, Miss Anderson. I'll come and see you tomorrow. You know newcomers in India always make the first calls. I shall find you at home, sha'n't I?'

'By all means,' Madeline said.

Mrs. Innes crossed the room, crying out that the heat was perfectly absurd for Simla, it must be cooler outside; and as Captain Valentine Drake followed her into the semi-darkness of the veranda, the three married schoolgirls looked at each other and smiled.

'Don't be naughty,' said Captain Gordon, leaning over the sofa from behind. 'They're very dear friends, and they've been separated for two years.'

Madeline heard this as plainly as they did. She noted disdainfully how it all fell in.

'How absent you are tonight!' Horace Innes exclaimed, when Miss Anderson had asked him a trivial question for the third time.

'Hus.h.!.+' she said. 'Mrs. Scallepa is going to sing;' and as Mrs. Scallepa sang she let her eyes play over him with a light in them so tender, that once catching it the felt a sudden answering throb, and looked again; but after that her eyes were on the floor.

'We are staying here,' he said a quarter of an hour later, as he saw her into her rickshaw; 'and I think I must see you to your quarters. It's very dark, and there is an ugly little slip half-way between this and the Mall.

He ran upstairs to get his coat and stick, and a white face like an apparition suddenly hung itself on the edge of Madeline's rickshaw-hood.

'Don't tell him tonight,' it said, hoa.r.s.ely.

'Are you ready, Colonel Innes? Then good night, everybody,' cried Madeline.

She was not at all sure that she would not tell Horace Innes 'tonight'.

Chapter 3.V.

'My wife,' said Colonel Innes, 'is looking extremely well.'

'She seems so, indeed,' Madeline replied.

'She is delighted with ”Two Gables”. Likes it better, she says, than any other house we could have got.'

'What a good thing!'

'It was a record trip for the Caledonia, thirteen days from Brindisi to Bombay. Was she telling you about the voyage?'

'No,' said Madeline impatiently, 'she didn't mention it. How shall I tell the men to put down the hood, please? A rickshaw is detestable with the hood up--stifling! Thanks. I beg your pardon. The Caledonia made a good run?'

'Thirteen days. Wonderful weather, of course, which was luck for Violet.

She is an atrocious sailor.'

Madeline fancied she heard repose and rea.s.surance in his voice.

Her thought cried, 'It is not so bad as he expected!' We can not be surprised that she failed to see in herself the alleviation of that first evening.

'She has brought quant.i.ties of things for the house with her,' Innes went on, 'as well as three dachshund puppies,' and he laughed. 'Wouldn't you like one? What can we do with three--and the terrier, and Brutus?'

'Oh, thank you, no.'