my
maxims with a kind of arid frivolity, and sometimes I tore them up. One
quick, warm-blooded scolding would have been worth a sheaf of them. My
studied little phrases could only inoculate her with a dislike for me
without protecting her from anything under the sun.

However, I found she didn't dislike me, when John and I went home at
last to bring her out. She received me with just a hint of kindness,
perhaps, but on the whole very well.

Chapter 1.II

John was recalled, of course, before the end of our furlough, which
knocked various things on the head; but that is the sort of thing one
learned to take with philosophy in any lengthened term of Her Majesty's
service. Besides, there is usually sugar for the pill; and in this case
it was a Staff command bigger than anything we expected for at least
five years to come. The excitement of it when it was explained to her
gave Cecily a charming colour. She took a good deal of interest in the
General, her papa; I think she had an idea that his distinction would
alleviate the situation in India, however it might present itself. She
accepted that prospective situation calmly; it had been placed before
her all her life. There would always be a time when she should go and
live with papa and mamma in India, and so long as she was of an age to
receive the idea with rebel tears she was assured that papa and mamma
would give her a pony. The pony was no longer added to the prospect; it
was absorbed no doubt in the general list of attractions calculated
to reconcile a young lady to a parental roof with which she had no
practical acquaintance. At all events, when I feared the embarrassment
and dismay of a pathetic parting with darling grandmamma and the
aunties, and the sweet cat and the dear vicar and all the other objects
of affection, I found an agreeable unexpected philosophy.

I may add that while I anticipated such broken-hearted farewells I
was quite prepared to take them easily. Time, I imagined, had brought
philosophy to me also, equally agreeable and equally unexpected.

It was a Bombay ship, full of returning Anglo-Indians. I looked up and
down the long saloon tables with a sense of relief and of solace; I
was again among my own people. They belonged to Bengal and to Burma, to
Madras and to the Punjab, but they were all my people. I could pick out
a score that I knew in fact, and there were none that in imagination I
didn't know. The look of wider seas and skies, th