"Are you really?" and she gazed at him interrogatively. "Well, Aunt Fan can do great things in a week. Of course this is your first visit to India?"
"No, I was up in the North-west, eight years ago."
"At school?"
"I am older than you suppose. I joined the Warlocks at Lucknow, and after a couple of months had a bad go of typhoid, and was sent home. However, the regiment followed next reliefs."
"They must have been attached to you!" she exclaimed with an air of grave conviction.
Mallender burst into a spontaneous laugh, then he said:
"And now here I am, in the benighted Presidency!"
"May I give you one little hint?" she whispered.
"A dozen—twenty dozen."
"Never say a word against Madras to Freddy, or he will boil over! He is an infatuated Madrassi; talks very big of Clive, Charnock, Warren Hastings—and his lady friend, Mrs. Anna Maria Imhoff, who lived in his house at the Mount; also of Yale in the Fort, and others, precisely as if they were all here to-day! He is so jealous, for the old, old, original Presidency, and loves every temple, and toddy tree, between this and Ceylon. I won't ask what you think of us yet."