“May be so,” coolly rejoined her hostess. “I know it was a mess-house, and after that an officers’ chummery, fifteen or twenty years ago; but no one would live there now, unless they had no other roof to cover them, and came to a place like a parcel of beggars!”
“Why, what’s up with it?” inquired Mrs. Jackson, suddenly becoming of a dusky puce, even through her pearl-powder.
“Don’t you know—and you there this two months and more?”
“Indeed I don’t; what is there to know?”
“And haven’t you seen him?” demanded Mrs. Clarke, in a key of intense surprise—“I mean the Khitmatgar?”
“I declare I don’t know what you are talking about,” cried the other, peevishly. “What Khitmatgar?”
“What Khitmatgar? Hark at her! Why, a short, square-shouldered man, in a smart blue coat, with a regimental badge in his turban. He has very sticking-out, curling black whiskers, and a pair of wicked eyes that look as if they could stab you, though he salaams to the ground whenever you meet him.”
“I believe I have seen him, now you mention it,” rejoined Mrs. Jackson; “rather a tidy-looking servant, with, as you say, a bad expression. But bless you! we have such crowds of officers’ messengers coming with chits to my husband, I never know who they are! I’ve seen him now and then, of an evening, I’m sure, though I don’t know what brought him, or whose servant he is.”
“Servant!” echoed the other. “Why, he is a ghost—the ghost what haunts the bungalow!”
“Ah, now, Mrs. Clark,” said her visitor, patronizingly, “you don’t tell me you believe such rubbish?”