ed to
each other on the Mall with an equal sense of the divine right of
secretaries. It may seem irrelevant, but I feel compelled to explain
here that I had remained a bachelor while Harris had married twice, and
that I had kept up my cricket, while Harris had let his figure take all
the soft curves of middle age. Nevertheless the fact remained. Sometimes
I fancied it gave a certain piquancy to my relations with his daughter,
but I could never believe that the laugh was on my side.

If we met at dinner-parties, it would be sometimes Edward Harris and
sometimes myself who would take the dullest and stoutest woman down. If
she fell to him, the next in precedence was bestowed upon me, and there
might not be a pin to choose between them for phlegm and inflation. It
is a preposterous mistake to suppose that the married ladies of Simla
are in the majority brilliant and fascinating creatures, who say things
in French for greater convenience, and lead a man on. After fifteen
years I am ready to swear that I have been led on to nothing more
compromising than a subscription to the Young Women's Christian
Association, though no one could have been more docile or more
intelligent. During one viceroyalty of happy memory half a dozen
clever and amusing men and women came together in Simla--it was a mere
fortuitous occurrence, aided by a joyous ruler who hated being bored
as none before or ever since have hated it--and the place has lived
socially upon the reputation of that meteoric term ever since. Whereas
the domestic virtues are no more deeply rooted anywhere than under the
deodars; nor could any one, I hasten to add, chronicle the fact with
more profound satisfaction than myself. A dinner-party, however, is not
a favourable setting for the domestic virtues; it does them so little
justice that one could sometimes almost wish them left at home, and I
was talking of Simla dinner-parties, where I have encountered so many.
How often have I been consulted as to the best school for boys in
England, or instructed as to how much I should let my man charge me for
shoe-blacking, or advised as to the most effectual way of preventing the
butler from stealing my cheroots, while Dora Harris, remote as a star,
talked to a cavalry subaltern about wind-galls and splints! At these
moments I felt my seniority bitterly; to give Dora to a cavalry
subaltern was such plain waste.

It was an infinite pleasure to know any one as well as I seemed to know