"But, dear, surely you are not favouring Tommy?—he will never be anything great in our Service. You have the example of your own father who has come to the end of his prospects on an income that would have been hopelessly inadequate had there been boys to educate and start in life! That's what our Service is worth! While Jack—!" words failed her to express her estimation of the Indian Civil Service of which Jack was a promising member.
"But dear Mother, I am not going to marry a Service!" laughed Honor. "When I fall in love with a Man it won't much matter what job he is in, or what prospects he has. And if he is in love with me, and wants me, why"—she left the obvious conclusion to her mother's imagination. "But rest assured, whoever he may be, he will never be Tommy!" she added by way of consolation.
The morning after the dinner-party was typical of late October in the plains of Bengal, with its dewy freshness of atmosphere and a nip in the north wind that was an earnest of approaching winter—if the season of cold weather might be so termed, when fires were never a necessity, and frost was rare. It was, however, a time of pleasant drought when the state of the weather could be depended upon for weeks ahead, with blue skies, a kinder sun, and dead leaves carpeting the earth without denuding the trees of their wealth of foliage.
Outside the Bara Koti a light haze was visible through the branches of the trees, lying like a thin veil on the distant horizon; and, overhead, light fleecy clouds drifted imperceptibly across the blue sky. It was the hour popularly believed to be the best in the twenty-four, which accounted for Mrs. Meredith's ayah wheeling the baby through the dusty lanes, in a magnificent perambulator, "to eat the air."
"Hawa khané," translated Honor Bright critically, as she drew rein and moved her pony aside to make way. She was riding, in company with Tommy Deare, to Sombari that she might learn the latest news of Elsie Meek, a girl of her own age and one for whom she had much sympathy. Elsie had been undergoing the training necessary to fit her for becoming a missionary, irrespective of her talents in other directions; and Honor had often thought of her with sympathy. But Mr. Meek had his own ideas respecting his daughter's career, and Mrs. Meek had long since ceased to voice her own. "Hawa khané!—how queerly the natives express themselves!" Her remark had followed the ayah's explanation of her appearance with the child. "Mother says it is a mistake for delicate children to be out before sunrise to 'eat the air.'"
"Eat microbes, I should suggest," corrected Tommy. "A case of 'The Early Babe catches the Germ.'"
"How smart of you!—how do you do it so early in the morning?"
"Inherent wit," said Tommy complacently. "You press a button and out comes an epigram, or something brilliant."
"You've missed your vocation, it seems. I am sure you might have made a fortune as another George Robey!"
While Tommy affected to collapse under the lash of her satire, she leapt from the saddle to imprint a kiss on the rose-leaf skin of the infant's cheek. "What a perfect doll it is—did any one see any thing half so adorable!"