"No, I am a lone being, and I think it is just as well."
"Why?"
"If I had a wife and children it would only mean separation sooner or later. Children must be sent home after a certain age, not only on account of health and education but because the moral atmosphere is bad for them, and to my mind the children should be considered before the husband."
"How do you mean—the moral atmosphere?" she asked argumentatively. "I have always understood that natives were excellent with children, kind and patient and faithful."
"They are all that, bless them!" he said, "but their ideas of discipline are not quite the same as our own. To tell lies is merely a matter of self-protection, and, all wrong as it may seem, they knuckle under to English children, let them have their own way, and encourage them indirectly to be arrogant and self-indulgent, taking a sort of pride in their faults! At least that is what my married friends tell me."
"Then the parents are to blame!" declared Miss Baker severely, "for leaving their children to the care of servants while they amuse themselves flirting and dancing and playing games! You don't accuse this Mr. Kipling everybody talks about of writing what is not true, I conclude?"
"Have you never read a preface to one of his books in which he particularly warns his readers not to judge of the dirt of a room by the sweepings in a corner? Parents in India are much the same as parents in England, and parents in England haven't to contend with exile and climate and long separations"—he paused, feeling he was wasting his breath, and was ashamed of a spiteful little sense of satisfaction when at that moment she tripped and clung to him to save herself a fall.
"Now, if I hadn't been with you"—he could not help reminding her.
"I should have come a cropper, and probably been none the worse," she replied ungratefully. "What were we saying? Oh! about parents in India. Why do you go into the Indian services at all then? You know what to expect!"