full of the moon, with a better
chance of roses. I had no special views, but Cecily contributed some;
that we should do the Hall of Audience in the morning, so as not to
interfere with the club tennis in the afternoon, that we should bicycle
to Akbar's tomb and take a cold luncheon--if we were sure there would
be no snakes--to the Deserted City, to all of which Dacres gave loyal
assent. I endorsed everything; I was the encouraging chorus, only
stipulating that my number should be swelled from day to day by the
addition of such persons as I should approve. Cecily, for instance,
wanted to invite the Bakewells because we had come out in the same ship
with them; but I could not endure the Bakewells, and it seemed to me
that our having made the voyage with them was the best possible reason
for declining to lay eyes on them for the rest of our natural lives.
'Mamma has such strong prejudices,' Cecily remarked, as she reluctantly
gave up the idea; and I waited to see whether the graceless Tottenham
would unmurmuringly take down the Bakewells. How strong must be the
sentiment that turns a man into a boa-constrictor without a pang of
transmigration! But no, this time he was faithful to the principles of
his pre-Cecilian existence. 'They are rather Boojums,' he declared.
'You would think so, too, if you knew them better. It is that kind of
excellent person that makes the real burden of India.' I could have
patted him on the back.

Thanks to the rest of the chorus, which proved abundantly available,
I was no immediate witness to Cecily's introduction to the glorious
fragments which sustain in Agra the memory of the moguls. I may as well
say that I arranged with care that if anybody must be standing by when
Dacres disclosed them, it should not be I. If Cecily had squinted,
I should have been sorry, but I would have found in it no personal
humiliation. There were other imperfections of vision, however, for
which I felt responsible and ashamed; and with Dacres, though the
situation, Heaven knows, was none of my seeking, I had a little the
feeling of a dealer who offers a defective bibelot to a connoisseur. My
charming daughter--I was fifty times congratulated upon her appearance
and her manners--had many excellent qualities and capacities which she
never inherited from me; but she could see no more than the bulk, no
further than the perspective; she could register exactly as much as a
camera.

This was a curious thing, perhaps, to