ith a guarded look, said very possibly not
but one never knew; and Hilda, thinking of the far-off day when the
little girl of her was brought tactfully to disagreeable necessities,
covered a preposterous impulse to cry with another smile.

A thudding of bare feet overtook them. It was the syce, with his arms
full of thin paper bags, the kind that hold cheap millinery. "Oh, the
good man!" Hilda exclaimed, "My parcels!" and looked on equably, while
Arnold took them by their puckered ends. "I have been buying gold lace
and things from Chunder Dutt for a costume," she exclaimed. The bags
dangled helplessly from Arnold's fingers; he looked very much aware of
them. "Let me carry at least one," she begged. "I can perfectly with my
parasol hand;" but he refused her even one. "If I may be permitted to
take the responsibility," he said, happily, and she rejoined, "Oh, I
would trust you with things more fragile." At which, such is the
discipline of these orders, he looked steadily in front of him and
seemed deaf with modesty.

"But are you sure," said Hilda, suddenly considerate, "that it looks
well?"

"Is the gold lace, then, so very meretricious?"

"It goes doubtfully with your cloth," she laughed, and instantly looked
stricken with the conviction that she might better have said something
else. But Arnold appeared to take it simply and to see no gibe in it,
only a pleasant commonplace.

"It might look queer in Chowringhee," he said, "but this is not a
censorious public." Then, as if to palliate the word, he added, "They
will think me no more mad to carry paper bags than to carry myself, when
it is plain that I might ride--and they see me doing that every day."

All the same the paper bags swinging beside the girdled black skirt did
impart a touch of comedy, which was in a way a pity, since humour goes
so far to destroy the picturesque. Hilda without the paper bags would
have been vastly enough for contrast. She walked--one is inclined to
dwell upon her steps and face the risk of being unintelligible--in a
wide-sleeved gown of peach-coloured silk, rather frayed at the seams, a
trifle spent in vulnerable places, surmounted by an extravagant collar
and a Paris hat. The dress was of artistic intention, inexpensively
carried out, the hat had an accomplished _chic_; it had fallen to her in
the wreck and ruin of a too ambitious draper of Coolgardie. As a matter
of fact it was the only one she had. The wide sleeves ended a little