be much more useful in getting your luggage. Bertie's so slow.
Still, he's rather a dear. Remember, he's my property. You mustn't poach."

Noreen laughed again and said:

"If he admires you, dear, I'm sure no one could take him from you."

"My dear girl, you never can trust any man," said her friend seriously.
Then, glancing at herself in the mirror, she continued modestly:

"I know I'm not bad-looking, and lots of men do admire me. Bertie says I'm
a ripper."

She certainly was decidedly pretty, though of a type of beauty that would
fade early. Vain and empty-headed, she was, nevertheless, popular with the
class of men who are content with a shallow, silly woman with whom it is
easy to flirt. They described her as "good fun and not a bit strait-laced."
Noreen knew nothing of this side of her friend, for she had not seen her
since her marriage, and honestly thought her beautiful and fascinating.

Ida picked up her hat and parasol and said:

"Now I'll leave you to get straight, darling child, and come back to you
later on."

She looked into the glass again and went on:

"It's so nice to have you here. A woman alone is rather out of it,
especially if she comes from the other side of India and doesn't know
Calcutta people. Now it'll be all right when there are two of us. The cats
can't say horrid things about me and Bertie--though it's only the old
frumps that can't get a man who do. I _am_ glad you've come. We'll have
such fun."

* * * * *

Captain Bain, a dapper little man, designed by Nature to be the "tame cat"
of some married woman, was punctual when the time came to take the two
ladies to the Amusement Club. Noreen had very dubiously donned her smartest
frock which, having just been taken out of a trunk after a long journey,
seemed very crushed, creased, and dowdy compared with the freshness and
daintiness of Ida's _toilette._ Men as a rule understand nothing of the
agonies endured by a woman who must face the unfriendly stares of other
women in a gown that she feels will invite pitiless criticism.

But for the moment the girl forgot her worries as they turned out of the
hotel gate and reached the Chaurasta, the meeting of the "four-ways,"
nearly as busy a cross-roads as (and infinitely more beautiful than) Carfax
at Oxford or the Quattro Canti in Palermo. To the east the hill of
Jalapahar towered a thousand feet above Darjeeling, crowned with bungalows
and barracks. To the