off at once, Isobel; it is only five minutes’ walk to the bungalow. My man will see to your luggage being brought up. Come along, Doctor. Of course you will put up with me until you can look round and fix upon quarters. I told Rumzan to bring your things round with my niece’s. You have had a very pleasant voyage out, I hope, Isobel?” he went on, as they started.
“Very pleasant, uncle, though I got rather tired of it at last.”
“That is generally the way—everyone is pleasant and agreeable at first, but before they get to the end they take to quarreling like cats and dogs.”
“We were not quite as bad as that,” the girl laughed, “but we certainly weren’t as amiable the last month or so as we were during the first part of the voyage. Still, it was very pleasant all along, and nobody quarreled with me.”
“Present company are always excepted,” the Doctor said. “I stood in loco parentis, Major, and the result has been that I shall feel in future more charitable towards mothers of marriageable daughters. Still, I am bound to say that Miss Hannay has given me as little trouble as could be expected.”
“You frighten me, Doctor; if you found her so onerous only for a voyage, what have I to look forward to?”
“Well, you can’t say that I didn’t warn you, Major; when you wrote home and asked me to take charge of your niece on the way out, I told you frankly that my opinion of your good sense was shaken.”
“Yes, you did express yourself with some strength,” the Major laughed; “but then one is so accustomed to that, that I did not take it to heart as I might otherwise have done.”
“That was before you knew me, Dr. Wade, otherwise I should feel very hurt,” the girl put in.
“Yes, it was,” the Doctor said dryly.
“Don’t mind him, my dear,” her uncle said; “we all know the Doctor of old. This is my bungalow.”
“It is pretty, with all these flowers and shrubs round it,” she said admiringly.
“Yes, we have been doing a good deal of watering the last few weeks, so as to get it to look its best. This is your special attendant; she will take you up to your room. By the time you have had a bath, your boxes will be here. I told them to have a cup of tea ready for you upstairs. Breakfast will be on the table by the time you are ready.”
“Well, old friend,” he said to the Doctor, when the girl had gone upstairs, “no complications, I hope, on the voyage?”
“No, I think not,” the Doctor said. “Of course, there were lots of young puppies on board, and as she was out and out the best looking girl in the ship half of them were dancing attendance upon her all the voyage, but I am bound to say that she acted like a sensible young woman; and though she was pleasant with them all, she didn’t get into any flirtation with one more than another. I did my best to look after her, but, of course, that would have been of no good if she had been disposed to go her own way. I fancy about half of them proposed to her—not that she ever said as much to me—but whenever I observed one looking sulky and giving himself airs I could guess pretty well what had happened. These young puppies are all alike, and we are not without experience of the species out here.
“Seriously, Major, I think you are to be congratulated. I consider that you ran a tremendous risk in asking a young woman, of whom you knew nothing, to come out to you; still it has turned out well. If she had been a frivolous, giggling thing, like most of them, I had made up my mind to do you a good turn by helping to get her engaged on the voyage, and should have seen her married offhand at Calcutta, and have come up and told you that you were well out of the scrape. As, contrary to my expectations, she turned out to be a sensible young woman, I did my best the other way. It is likely enough you may have her on your hands some little time, for I don’t think she is likely to be caught by the first comer. Well, I must go and have my bath; the dust has been awful coming up from Allahabad. That is one advantage, and the only one as far as I can see, that they have got in England. They don’t know what dust is there.”
When the bell for breakfast rang, and Isobel made her appearance, looking fresh and cool, in a light dress, the Major said, “You must take the head of the table, my dear, and assume the reins of government forthwith.”
“Then I should say, uncle, that if any guidance is required, there will be an upset in a very short time. No, that won’t do at all. You must go on just as you were before, and I shall look on and learn. As far as I can see, everything is perfect just as it is. This is a charming room, and I am sure there is no fault to be found with the arrangement of these flowers on the table. As for the cooking, everything looks very nice, and anyhow, if you have not been able to get them to cook to your taste, it is of no use my attempting anything in that way. Besides, I suppose I must learn something of the language before I can attempt to do anything. No, uncle, I will sit in this chair if you like, and make tea and pour it out, but that is the beginning and the end of my assumption of the head of the establishment at present.”
“Well, Isobel, I hardly expected that you were going to run the establishment just at first; indeed, as far as that goes, one’s butler, if he is a good man, has pretty well a free hand. He is generally responsible, and is in fact what we should call at home housekeeper—he and the cook between them arrange everything. I say to him, ‘Three gentlemen are coming to tiffen.’ He nods and says ‘Atcha, sahib,’ which means ‘All right, sir,’ and then I know it will be all right. If I have a fancy for any special thing, of course I say so. Otherwise, I leave it to them, and if the result is not satisfactory, I blow up. Nothing can be more simple.”
“But how about bills, uncle?”
“Well, my dear, the butler gives them to me, and I pay them. He has been with me a good many years, and will not let the others—that is to say, the cook and the syce, the washerman, and so on, cheat me beyond a reasonable amount. Do you, Rumzan?”
Rumzan, who was standing behind the Major’s chair, in a white turban and dress, with a red and white sash round his waist, smiled.
“Rumzan not let anyone rob his master.”
“Not to any great extent, you know, Rumzan. One doesn’t expect more than that.”
“It is just the same here, Miss Hannay, as it is everywhere else,” said the Doctor; “only in big establishments in England they rob you of pounds, while here they rob you of annas, which, as I have explained to you, are two pence halfpennies. The person who undertakes to put down little peculations enters upon a war in which he is sure to get the worst of it. He wastes his time, spoils his temper, makes himself and everyone around him uncomfortable, and after all he is robbed. Life is too short for it, especially in a climate like this. Of course, in time you get to understand the language; if you see anything in the bills that strikes you as showing waste you can go into the thing, but as a rule you trust entirely to your butler; if you cannot trust him, get another one. Rumzan has been with your uncle ten years, so you are fortunate. If the Major had gone home instead of me, and if you had had an entirely fresh establishment of servants to look after, the case would have been different; as it is, you will have no trouble that way.”
“Then what are my duties to be, uncle?”
“Your chief duties, my dear, are to look pleasant, which will evidently be no trouble to you; to amuse me and keep me in a good temper as far as possible; to keep on as good terms as may be with the other ladies of the station; and, what will perhaps be the most difficult part of your work, to snub and keep in order the young officers of our own and other corps.”
Isobel laughed. “That doesn’t sound a very difficult programme, uncle, except the last item; I have already had a little experience that way, haven’t I, Doctor? I hope I shall have the benefit of your assistance in the future, as I had aboard the ship.”
“I will do my best,” the Doctor said grimly; “but the British subaltern is pretty well impervious to snubs; he belongs to the pachydermatous family of animals; his armor of self conceit renders him invulnerable against the milder forms of raillery. However, I think you can be trusted to hold your own with him, Miss Hannay, without much assistance from the Major or myself. Your real difficulty