y repute. For, with the exception of the comparatively few
lawyers, planters, merchants, or railway folk, the names of all are set
forth in the two Golden Books of the land, the Army List and the Civil
Service List; and hostesses fly with relief to the blessed "Table of
Precedence" contained in them, which tells whether the wife of Colonel This
should go in to dinner before or after the spouse of Mr. That. The great
god Snob is the supreme deity of Anglo-India.

Many hill-stations are the Hot Weather headquarters of some important
Government official, such as the Governor of the Presidency or the
Lieutenant-Governor or Chief Commissioner of the Province. These are great
personages indeed in India. They have military guards before their doors.
The Union Jack waves by command above their august heads. They have Indian
Cavalry soldiers to trot before their wives' carriages when these good
ladies drive down to bargain in the native bazaar. But to the hill visitors
their chief reason for existing is that their position demands the giving
of official entertainments to which all of the proper class (who duly
inscribe their names in the red-bound, gold-lettered book in the hall of
Government House) have a prescriptive right to be invited.

Noreen revelled in the gaieties. Her frank-hearted enjoyment was like a
child's, and made every man who knew her anxious to add to it. She could
not possibly ride all the ponies offered to her nor accept half the
invitations that she got. Even among the women she was popular, for none
but a match-making mother or a jealous spinster could resist her.

Proposals of marriage were not showered on her, as persons ignorant of
Anglo-Indian life fondly believe to be the lot of every English girl there.
While a dowerless maiden still has a much better chance of securing a
husband in a land where maidens are few and bachelors are many, yet the day
has long gone by when every spinster who had drawn a blank in England could
be shipped off to India with the certainty of finding a spouse there.
Frequent leave and fast steamers have altered that. When a man can go home
in a fortnight every year or second year he is not as anxious to snatch at
the first maiden who appears in his station as his predecessor who lived in
India in the days when a voyage to England took six months. And men in the
East are as a rule not anxious to marry. A wife out there is a handicap at
every turn. She adds enormously to his expe