of years or so."

"Is not this rather an ad hominem style of argument?"

"Can't help it in a case like this. Indeed, I am not sure you ought not
to go further and weigh the whole character and quality and upbringing
of the man. You must admit that the monumental complacency with which he
trotted out his ingenious little Constitution for India showed a strange
want of imagination and the sense of humor."

"No, I don't quite admit it," said Pagett.

"Well, you know him and I don't, but that's how it strikes a stranger."
He turned on his heel and paced the veranda thoughtfully. "And, after
all, the burden of the actual, daily unromantic toil falls on the
shoulders of the men out here, and not on his own. He enjoys all the
privileges of recommendation without responsibility, and we-well,
perhaps, when you've seen a little more of India you'll understand. To
begin with, our death rate's five times higher than yours-I speak now
for the brutal bureaucrat--and we work on the refuse of worked-out
cities and exhausted civilizations, among the bones of the dead."

Pagett laughed. "That's an epigrammatic way of putting it, Orde."

"Is it? Let's see," said the Deputy Commissioner of Amara, striding into
the sunshine toward a half-naked gardener potting roses. He took the
man's hoe, and went to a rain-scarped bank at the bottom of the garden.

"Come here, Pagett," he said, and cut at the sun-baked soil. After
three strokes there rolled from under the blade of the hoe the half of a
clanking skeleton that settled at Pagett's feet in an unseemly jumble of
bones. The M.P. drew back.

"Our houses are built on cemeteries," said Orde. "There are scores of
thousands of graves within ten miles."

Pagett was contemplating the skull with the awed fascination of a man
who has but little to do with the dead. "India's a very curious place,"
said he, after a pause.

"Ah? You'll know all about it in three months. Come in to lunch," said
Orde.

End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Under the Deodars, by Rudyard Kipling

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