"Girls, I have ordered the wagonette for this afternoon," announced Mrs. Chandos, "so we will all go to the club. Verona, you have been here two months, and never once been in to the station. Just fancy!"
Verona's attempted apologies and excuses were imperiously silenced. In a quarter of an hour she found herself driving from the door, in company with her mother, Dominga, Pussy and Blanche, who had been spending the morning with her relations.
"Oh, Verona, how I wish you knew some of the officers' wives," bewailed her mother; "it would be such a help to your poor sisters. You see, although we are such a good family at home, and go back for hundreds of years, yet we are looked down on in Rajahpore as just factory nobodies. Your father will never leave a card on the mess, no, not even when his old friends were here, though I went down on my knees and asked him to do it. Yes, I did! No one calls on us except one or two young men who are no good. No?"
"But don't you go to numbers of entertainments and tennis parties?" enquired the newcomer.
"We go only to look on—to sports and cricket matches, but we know no one, for we, of course, will not sit beside the Trotters and the wood contract people. Then, when we go to the station club, people give us the cold shoulder, and look as much as to say, 'Now, what are you doing here?' If you only knew one or two officers' wives they would ask us to balls and dinners, and what a thing it would be for us! There must be hundreds and thousands of people in the world that you know, Verona."
"Yes; but I do not think that I shall meet any of them at Rajahpore."
During this conversation the party had been driving towards the cantonment, which at this period of the year resembled green, park-like plains, diversified with barracks, bungalows, clumps of feathery bamboos, and clumsy mango trees.
Outside the club waited many carriages, and round the tennis courts a number of people were assembled, as Mrs. Chandos and her daughters descended (unassisted) from the wagonette.
They chattered into the reading-room, en masse, and went over to the big table where the picture papers were to be found. These they tossed about recklessly, or turned over with contemptuous indifference. No one took the smallest notice of them, although Blanche, Dominga and Pussy had duly announced their arrival by loud remarks and laughter, as ear-piercing as a peacock's scream.
Mrs. Chandos was apparently buried in the Queen, but her little black eyes were all the time roving round the room; yet she did not appear to observe the glances of annoyance that were cast at her three merry daughters. Verona, more sensitive, got up and walked away into the adjoining library, which was lined with books. Several people were also examining the shelves. As she was turning over the pages of an old friend, she was startled to hear a voice beside her say: "Is it possible that I behold Miss Chandos?" She looked up quickly, and beheld a little blonde lady, with a pert, piquant face, and in an instant recognised Miss Snoad, a second-rate girl, who lived near the Melvilles, and whom she suddenly remembered had, to the surprise and delight of her family, married an officer and gone to India.