elves with decorum for quite a time after that, though
Mrs Basil spent so many hours over the accounts of the Ashburnham estate
that she got the name of every field by heart. Edward had a huge map of
his lands in his harness-room and Major Basil did not seem to mind. I
believe that people do not mind much in lonely stations. It might
have lasted for ever if the Major had not been made what is called a
brevet-colonel during the shuffling of troops that went on just before
the South African War. He was sent off somewhere else and, of course,
Mrs Basil could not stay with Edward. Edward ought, I suppose, to have
gone to the Transvaal. It would have done him a great deal of good to
get killed. But Leonora would not let him; she had heard awful stories
of the extravagance of the hussar regiment in war-time--how they left
hundred-bottle cases of champagne, at five guineas a bottle, on the
veldt and so on. Besides, she preferred to see how Edward was spending
his five hundred a year. I don't mean to say that Edward had any
grievance in that. He was never a man of the deeds of heroism sort and
it was just as good for him to be sniped at up in the hills of the North
Western frontier, as to be shot at by an old gentleman in a tophat at
the bottom of some spruit. Those are more or less his words about it. I
believe he quite distinguished himself over there. At any rate, he had
had his D.S.O. and was made a brevet-major. Leonora, however, was not in
the least keen on his soldiering. She hated also his deeds of heroism.
One of their bitterest quarrels came after he had, for the second
time, in the Red Sea, jumped overboard from the troopship and rescued a
private soldier. She stood it the first time and even complimented him.
But the Red Sea was awful, that trip, and the private soldiers seemed
to develop a suicidal craze. It got on Leonora's nerves; she figured
Edward, for the rest of that trip, jumping overboard every ten minutes.
And the mere cry of "Man overboard" is a disagreeable, alarming and
disturbing thing. The ship gets stopped and there are all sorts of
shouts. And Edward would not promise not to do it again, though,
fortunately, they struck a streak of cooler weather when they were
in the Persian Gulf. Leonora had got it into her head that Edward was
trying to commit suicide, so I guess it was pretty awful for her when
he would not give the promise. Leonora ought never to have been on that
troopship; but she got there som