Lance wanted him. He might be useful on the spot. And
that settled the matter.

Impossible to leave so much loveliness, such large drafts of peace and
leisure, without a pang; but--the wrench over--he was well content to
find himself established in this ramshackle bachelor bungalow, back
again with Lance and his music--very much in evidence just now--and the
two superfluous good fellows, whom he liked well enough in homoeopathic
doses. Especially he liked Jack Meredith, cousin of the Desmonds;--a
large and simple soul, gravely absorbed in pursuing balls and tent-pegs
and 'pig'; impervious to feminine lures; equally impervious to the
caustic wit of his diametrical opposite, Captain James Barnard, who
eased his private envy by christening him 'Don Juan.' For Meredith
fatally attracted women; and Barnard--cultured, cynical, Cambridge--was
as fatally susceptible to them as a trout to a May-fly; but, for some
unfathomable reason they would not; and in Anglo-India a man could not
hide his failures under a bushel. Lance classified him comprehensively
as 'one of the War lot'; liked him, and was sorry for him,
although--perhaps because--he was 'no soldier.'

Roy also liked him; and enjoyed verbal fencing-bouts with him when the
mood was on. Still he would have preferred, beyond measure, the Kohat
arrangement, with the Colonel for an unobtrusive third.

But the Colonel, these days, had a bungalow to himself; a bungalow in
process of being furnished by no means on bachelor lines. For the
unbelievable had come to pass----! And the whole affair had been carried
through in his own inimitable fashion, without so much as a tell-tale
ripple on the surface of things. Quite unobtrusively, at Kohat, he had
made friends with the General's daughter--a dark-haired slip of a girl,
with the blood of distinguished Frontier soldiers in her veins. Quite
unobtrusively--during Christmas week--he had laid his heart and the
Regiment at her feet. Quite unobtrusively, he proposed to marry her in
April, when the leave season opened, and carry her off to Kashmir.

"_That's_ the way it goes with _some_ people," said Lance, the first
time he spoke of it; and Roy fancied he detected a wistful note in his
voice.

"That's the way it'll go with you, old man," he had retorted. "I'm the
one that will have to look out for squalls!"

Lance had merely smiled and said nothing:--the reception he usually
accorded to personal remarks. And, at the moment, Roy thou