“Oh yes, it’s as difficult to get off a girl here as it is elsewhere. In these days when the exchange is so low, sending home money is ruination—people bring out their families, and the country is overrun with paying guests, and this, in India, so famous once for hospitality! My two girls are married—not grand matches, but to really good fellows—and I must confess I miss them. My husband and I are alone—just Darby and Joan. I am sorry to say that his time will soon be up, he will be retired, and we go home for good next spring.”
“Then you love India?” I said.
She nodded expressively, and added:
“You see I was born out here, as were my father and mother before me. We come of families who have made their home in India for many generations—educated of course in England, they all return like homing pigeons to the Army, to the Civil Service, and to many other posts. India draws them—they all hear the East a-calling.”
“And so you will be really sorry to retire?”
“Yes,” she admitted, “and if we can’t stand it we will return and settle down in the hills. I can see us in England, probably established in some London suburb, in a little house, with smoky chimneys, the boiler always out of order, two servants—saying they’ve too much to do—ourselves with nothing to do, no interests, and none of our accustomed comforts. My! I don’t like to think of it! I have heard such tales from friends who have gone back to England, and find the change awful, especially the climate.”
“Oh,” I exclaimed astonished, “you do surprise me.”
“Yes,” she answered. “Give me the ordinary honest hot weather out here. You know where you are; when the heat or rains are due, and when they cease. It is so much better than your capricious sun one day and snow the next, and your desperate English winters. Most English die in winter, and no wonder! You are staying with Mrs. Soames,” she continued. “Your brother is in Colonel Soames’s regiment; they are going home in the spring like ourselves.”
This announcement gave me a shock. I understood that there might be a move from Secunderabad, but I never realised that it would be to England, or that I might find myself back at Torrington, before the year was out. As I pondered the subject Mrs. Lakin suddenly rose, in answer to a frantic signal from another matron.
“Bridge,” she said, turning to me with a triumphant smile, “they have got up a rubber at last!”