seasons than I care to think about. Do you suppose men
are chosen for appointments because of their special fitness beforehand?
You have all passed a high test what do you call it? in the beginning,
and, except for the few who have gone altogether to the bad, you can all
work hard. Asking does the rest. Call it cheek, call it insolence, call
it anything you like, but ask! Men argue yes, I know what men say that a
man, by the mere audacity of his request, must have some good in him. A
weak man doesn't say: "Give me this and that." He whines: "Why haven't
I been given this and that?" If you were in the Army, I should say learn
to spin plates or play a tambourine with your toes. As it is ask! You
belong to a Service that ought to be able to command the Channel Fleet,
or set a leg at twenty minutes' notice, and yet you hesitate over asking
to escape from a squashy green district where you admit you are not
master. Drop the Bengal Government altogether. Even Darjiling is
a little out-of-the-way hole. I was there once, and the rents were
extortionate. Assert yourself. Get the Government of India to take you
over. Try to get on the Frontier, where every man has a grand chance
if he can trust himself. Go somewhere! Do something! You have twice the
wits and three times the presence of the men up here, and, and' Mrs.
Hauksbee paused for breath; then continued 'and in any way you look at
it, you ought to. You who could go so far!'

'I don't know,' said Yeere, rather taken aback by the unexpected
eloquence. 'I haven't such a good opinion of myself.'

It was not strictly Platonic, but it was Policy. Mrs. Hauksbee laid
her hand lightly upon the ungloved paw that rested on the turned-back
'rickshaw hood, and, looking the man full in the face, said tenderly,
almost too tenderly, 'I believe in you if you mistrust yourself. Is that
enough, my friend?'

'It is enough,' answered Otis very solemnly.

He was silent for a long time, redreaming the dreams that he had dreamed
eight years ago, but through them all ran, as sheet-lightning through
golden cloud, the light of Mrs. Hauksbee's violet eyes.

Curious and impenetrable are the mazes of Simla life the only existence
in this desolate land worth the living. Gradually it went abroad among
men and women, in the pauses between dance, play, and Gymkhana, that
Otis Yeere, the man with the newly-lit light of self-confidence in his
eyes, had 'done something decent' in the wilds whence he came.