by playing on the
hautboy.

"Where have you sprung from?"

"India. Got my long leave. I say, are you going this way? Let's go
together."

They went, and very fast; faster and faster every minute.

"Where are you going at this pace?" asked Shelton.

"London."

"Oh! only as far as London?"

"I 've set myself to do it in a week."

"Are you in training?"

"No."

"You 'll kill yourself."

Crocker answered with a chuckle.

Shelton noted with alarm the expression of his eye; there was a sort
of stubborn aspiration in it. "Still an idealist!" he thought; "poor
fellow!" "Well," he inquired, "what sort of a time have you had in
India?"

"Oh," said the Indian civilian absently, "I've, had the plague."

"Good God!"

Crocker smiled, and added:

"Caught it on famine duty."

"I see," said Shelton; "plague and famine! I suppose you fellows really
think you 're doing good out there?"

His companion looked at him surprised, then answered modestly:

"We get very good screws."

"That 's the great thing," responded Shelton.

After a moment's silence, Crocker, looking straight before him, asked:

"Don't you think we are doing good?"

"I 'm not an authority; but, as a matter of fact, I don't."

Crocker seemed disconcerted.

"Why?" he bluntly asked.

Shelton was not anxious to explain his views, and he did not reply.

His friend repeated:

"Why don't you think we're doing good in India?"

"Well," said Shelton gruffly, "how can progress be imposed on nations
from outside?"

The Indian civilian, glancing at Shelton in an affectionate and doubtful
way, replied:

"You have n't changed a bit, old chap."

"No, no," said Shelton; "you 're not going to get out of it that way.
Give me a single example of a nation, or an individual, for that matter,
who 's ever done any good without having worked up to it from within."

Crocker, grunting, muttered, "Evils."

"That 's it," said Shelton; "we take peoples entirely different from our
own, and stop their natural development by substituting a civilisation
grown for our own use. Suppose, looking at a tropical fern in a
hothouse, you were to say: 'This heat 's unhealthy for me; therefore it
must be bad for the fern, I 'll take it up and plant it outside in the
fresh air.'"

"Do you know that means giving up India?" said the Indian civilian
shrewdly.

"I don't say that; but to talk about doing good to India is--h'm!"

Crocker knitted his brows, trying to see t