other, when you got out of the gharry, we really knew
nothing whatever of each other."

Isobel shook her head decidedly.

"Nothing will persuade me that I didn't know everything about you,
uncle. You are just exactly what I knew you would be in look, and voice,
in manner and ways and everything. Of course, it is partly from what I
remember, but I really did not see a great deal of you in those days; it
is from your letters, I think, entirely that I knew all about you, and
exactly what you were. Do you mean to say that I am not just what you
thought I should be?"

"Well, not so clearly as all that, Isobel. Of course you were only a
little child when I saw you, and except that you had big brown eyes, and
long eyelashes, I confess that it struck me that you were rather a
plain little thing, and I do not think that your mother's letters since
conveyed to my mind the fact that there had been any material change
since. Therefore I own that you are personally quite different from what
I had expected to find you. I had expected to find you, I think, rather
stumpy in figure, and square in build, with a very determined and
businesslike manner."

"Nonsense, uncle, you could not have expected that."

"Well, my dear, I did, and you see I find I was utterly wrong."

"But you are not discontented, uncle?" Isobel asked, with a smile.

"No, my dear, but perhaps not quite so contented as you may think I
ought to be."

"Why is that, uncle?"

"Well, my dear, if you had been what I had pictured you, I might have
had you four or five years to myself. Possibly you might even have gone
home with me, to keep house for me in England, when I retire. As it is
now, I give myself six months at the outside."

"What nonsense, uncle! You don't suppose I am going to fall in love with
the first man who presents himself? Why, everyone says the sea voyage is
a most trying time, and, you see, I came through that quite scathless.

"Besides, uncle," and she laughed, "there is safety in multitude, and
I think that a girl would be far more likely to fall in love in some
country place, where she only saw one or two men, than where there are
numbers of them. Besides, it seems to me that in India a girl cannot
feel that she is chosen, as it were, from among other girls, as she
would do at home. There are so few girls, and so many men here, there
must be a sort of feeling that you are only appreciated because there is
nothing better to be had.

"But,