Mrs. Sladen rose at once; she was accustomed to being sent on errands and to being made use of by her intimates. She pulled on her cheap gloves, twisted her stringy boa round her neck, and held out her hand for the letter that was to bring Miss Paske to Shirani. As her friend stooped and kissed her, she looked up at her wistfully, and said—
“Ida, if this girl comes to you, you won’t think of her only as a marketable article, will you? You will allow her to marry—if she does marry—to please herself, won’t you, dear?”
“You silly, romantic little person!” exclaimed the other, patting her cheek with two solid taper fingers. “What an absurd question. As if any girl is ever married against her will in these enlightened days!”
Mrs. Sladen made no answer beyond an involuntary sigh. She went out to the verandah, and got into her rickshaw without another word and ere she was whirled away, nodded a somewhat melancholy farewell to her handsome, prosperous-looking friend who, clad in a rich tea-gown, had framed herself for a moment in the open doorway, and called out imperiously—
“The post goes at six; you have just ten minutes.” Then, with a shiver, Mrs. Langrishe closed the window and returned to her comfortable fireside. “Poor Milly!” she muttered, as she warmed one well-shod foot. “She was always odd and sentimental. Marry to please herself—yes, by all means—but she must also marry to please me!”
A rickshaw (the popular conveyance in the Himalayan hill-stations) is a kind of glorified bath-chair or grown-up perambulator, light and smart, and drawn and pushed by four men; it flies along flat roads and down hills as rapidly as a pony-cart, especially if your Jampannis are racing another team.
Mrs. Sladen’s rickshaw was old; the hood, of cheap American leather, was cracked and blistered, it had a list to one side, and her Jampannis wore the shabby clothes of last year—but, then, their mistress did the same! As they dashed down hill, they nearly came into collision with a smart Dyke’s cee-spring vehicle, and a quartette of men in brilliant (Rickett’s) blue and yellow liveries. The rickshaw contained an elderly lady of ample proportions, with flaxen hair and a good-humoured handsome face surmounting two chins. This was Mrs. Brande, the wife of Pelham Brande, Esq., a distinguished member of the Civil Service.
“Kubbardar, kubbardar!—take care, take care!” she shrieked. Then to Mrs. Sladen, “My gracious! how you do fly! but you are a light weight. Well, come alongside of me, my dear, and tell me all the news; this place is as dull as ditch-water, so few people here. Next year, I shan’t come up so early.”
“I believe every house is taken,” said Mrs. Sladen, cheerfully, as they rolled along side by side. “Even the Cedars, and the Monastery, and Haddon Hall.”