nd their two girls coming in to stay. I calculate the table will
hold fourteen comfortably enough. At any rate, come first night, even if
you can't come on the others."

"Certainly I will, Major, if you will let me bring Bathurst in with me;
he is going to stay with me for the races."

"By all means, Doctor; I like what I have seen of him very much."

"Yes, he has got a lot in him," the Doctor said, "only he is always head
over heels in work. He will make a big mark before he has done. He is
one of the few men out here who has thoroughly mastered the language; he
can talk to the natives like one of themselves, and understands them so
thoroughly that they are absolutely afraid to lie to him, which is the
highest compliment a native can pay to an Indian official. It is very
seldom he comes in to this sort of thing, but I seized him the other
day and told him that I could see he would break down if he didn't give
himself a holiday, and I fairly worried him into saying he would come
over and stay for the races. I believe then he would not have come if I
had not written to him that all the native swells would be here, and
it would be an excellent opportunity for him to talk to them about
the establishment of a school for the daughters of the upper class of
natives; that is one of his fads at present."

"But it would be a good thing surely, Doctor," Isobel said.

"No doubt, my dear, no doubt; and so would scores of other things, if
you could but persuade the natives so. But this is really one of the
most impracticable schemes possible, simply because the whole of these
unfortunate children get betrothed when they are two or three years
old, and are married at twelve. Even if all parties were agreed, the
husband's relations and the wife's relations and everyone else, what are
you going to teach a child worth knowing before she gets to the age of
twelve? Just enough to make her discontented with her lot. Once get the
natives to alter their customs and to marry their women at the age of
eighteen, and you may do something for them; but as long as they
stick to this idiotic custom of marrying them off when they are still
children, the case is hopeless."

"There is something I wanted to ask you, Doctor," Isobel said. "You know
this is the first time I have had anything to do with entertaining, and
I know nothing about decorating a table. Uncle says that you are a great
hand at the arrangement of flowers. Would you mind seeing