"If I am not so old as you expected, you are much older than I dreamt of. I always seem to see you in my mind's eye with a fair pigtail, and frock just reaching to your ankles."
"If you wish, I can return to both within the hour," she rejoined with a hysterical laugh. At this moment the ayah made her appearance round a corner, and said in her whining voice:
"Gussal tiar, Miss Sahib."
"It's my bath," she said. "I really must go and change. I feel such a grub ever since I left Bombay. Au revoir," and she sprang up, and left her guardian to his undisturbed reflections.
CHAPTER XVIII
DINNER FOR TWO
Whilst the young lady was changing her dress Gascoigne had another interview with his bearer, ere retiring into the damp tent to remove his wet clothes.
"Look here," he said, "you must do all you can to make the place nice for the Miss Sahib—tidy it up—and, I say, isn't there a lamp-shade?"
Abdullah assented with solemn complacency.
"There are no flowers, or dessert, but there's some chocolate—and see that the cook does not spare his stores, and has an eye to the ayah and coolies; they have all to be ready for an early start to-morrow." And having issued these orders, he departed to his damp quarters, where he experienced exasperating difficulties in finding his belongings, which had been hurled into the tent pell-mell. He had no looking-glass; he was actually obliged to do his tie at the back of his silver flask. How a woman upset a house! As Gascoigne searched wildly for a handkerchief, his thoughts were inhospitable—his mental expressions impassioned.