rices and the sins of
native servants. Hence, in due course, a friendship (according to Mrs
Ranyard) 'broad based on _jharrons_[20] and charcoal and kerosene'!

The two were lifting up their voices in unison over the mysterious
shortage of kerosene (that arch-sinner Mool Chand said none was coming
into the country) when dinner was announced; and Talbot
Hayes--inevitably--offered his arm to Miss Arden.

Roy, consigned to Dr Wemyss, could only pray heaven for the next best
thing--Miss Arden on his left. Instead, amazedly, he found himself
promoted to a seat beside her mother, who still further amazed him by
treating him to a much larger share of her attention than the law of the
dinner-table prescribed. Her talk, in the main, was local and personal;
and Roy simply let it flow; his eyes flagrantly straying down the table
towards Miss Arden and Hayes, who seemed very intimate this evening.

Suddenly he found himself talking about Home. It began with gardens. Mrs
Elton had a passion for them, as her _malis_[21] knew to their cost; and
the other day a friend had told her that somebody said Mr Sinclair had a
lovely place at Home, with a _wonderful_ old garden----?

Mr Sinclair admitted as much, with masculine brevity.

Undeterred, she drew out the sentimental stop:--the charm of a _real_
old English garden! Out here, one only used the word by courtesy.
Laborites, of course, were specially favoured; but do what one would, it
was never _quite_ the same thing--was it...?

Not quite, Roy agreed amicably--and wondered what the joke was down
there. He supposed Miss Arden must have had some say in the geography of
the table....

Her mother, meantime, had tacked sail and was probing him, indirectly,
about his reasons for remaining in India. Was he going in for politics,
or the life of a country gentleman in his beautiful home? Her remarks
implied that she took him for the eldest son. And Roy, who had not been
attending, realised with a jar that, in vulgar parlance, he was being
discreetly pumped. Whereat, politely but decisively, he sheered off and
stuck to his partner till the meal was over.

The men seemed to linger interminably over their wine and cigars. But he
managed to engage the D.C. on the one subject that put shyness to
flight--the problems of changing India. With more than twenty years of
work and observation behind him, he saw the widening gulf between rulers
and ruled as an almost equal disaster for both. He knew,