ho was staying at the Chief's. She wandered about restlessly
over the dry turf for a few minutes, and then went and sat down in a
corner of the little wooden Grand Stand and sent me for a cup of tea.

'Won't you come to the tent?' I asked a little ruefully, eyeing the
distance and the possible collisions between, but she shook her head.

'I simply couldn't bear it,' she said, and I went feeling somehow
chastened myself by the cloud that was upon her spirit.

I found her on my return regarding the scene with a more than usually
critical eye, and a more than usually turned down lip. Yet it was
exactly the scene it always was, and always, probably, will be. I sat
down beside her and regarded it also, but more charitably than usual.
Perhaps it was rather trivial, just a lot of pretty dresses and excited
young men in white riding-breeches doing foolish things on ponies in
the shortest possible time, with one little crowd about the Club's
refreshment tent and another about the Staff's, while the hills sat
round in an indifferent circle; but it appealed to me with a kind of
family feeling that afternoon, and inspired me with tolerance, even
benevolence.

'After all,' I said, 'it's mainly youth and high spirits--two good
things. And one knows them all.'

'And who are they to know?' complained Dora.

'Just decent young Englishmen and Englishwomen, out here on their
country's business,' I replied cheerfully; 'with the marks of Oxford and
Cambridge and Sandhurst and Woolwich on the men. Well-set-up youngsters,
who know what to do and how to do it. Oh, I like the breed!'

'I wonder,' said she, in a tone of preposterous melancholy, 'if
eventually I have to marry one of them.'

'Not necessarily,' I said. She looked at me with interest, as if I had
contributed importantly to the matter in hand, and resumed tapping her
boot with her riding-crop. We talked of indifferent things and had long
lapses. At the close of one effort Dora threw herself back with a deep,
tumultuous sigh. 'The poverty of this little wretched resort ties up
one's tongue!' she cried. 'It is the bottom of the cup; here one gets
the very dregs of Simla's commonplace. Let us climb out of it.'

I thought for a moment that Ronald had been too much for her nerves
coming down, and offered to change saddles, but she would not. We took
it out of the horses all along the first upward slopes, and as we pulled
in to breathe them she turned to me paler than ever.

'I