"We seldom write to each other."
"I thought you were bosom friends!—well, she was out alone looking for early snipe—someone had seen one in the fields beyond the bazaar—and while out, she was supposed to have been bitten by a snake——"
"—Why do you say 'supposed'?" Joyce interrupted ready to spring to arms for her friend.
"We'll say she was bitten, if you like; only, people bitten by snakes generally die, and she didn't. She tied a ligature and was limping home when she met Captain Dalton in his car on his way to a dispensary somewhere in the District. He took her up and home to his house where she stayed half the day alone with him. Her mother was week-ending in Calcutta, and Honor was in charge of her father's comforts and the home; but her father happened to have run out to Panipara for a rioting case which he and the police were bothered with; so Miss Honor stayed with the doctor till she thought fit to come home."
"Bitten by a snake!" gasped Joyce in consternation. "Poor Honor!—how terrified she must have been!"
"That's best known to herself and him. Since then, you'll observe that there is a sort of understanding between them."
"How do you mean?"
"They seem to be on far better terms than he is with any one else in the Station, and Honor is falling in love with him. I am anything but blind to the symptoms!" and Mrs. Fox struck a match and lighted another cigarette.
"I suppose they grew friendly over the treatment of her wound," said Joyce beginning to understand how it was that the doctor had learned to appreciate Honor Bright. Yet he was "not seeking to marry her."
"I must get Honor to tell me all about it when I see her. Perhaps she does not know I am back?"