Meanwhile in another tent Nesta Cheriton and the two younger girls were discussing the somewhat tragic arrival of the expected guest. To the former, however, his personality appealed more than the somewhat startling manner of his arrival.
“But what is he like, Lily?” she was saying—not quite for the first time.
“Oh! I told you before,” snapped Lily, waxing impatient, and burying her nose in a book—She was wont to be petulant when disturbed in the midst of an absorbing tale.
“He’s rather fun,” replied Hazel. “He isn’t young, though. He’s not as old as father—still he isn’t young.”
“I expect he’s quite an old fogey,” said Lily. “I don’t want to talk about him any more,” which reply moved Hazel to cackle elfishly, while cutting weird capers expressive of the vein mischievous.
“Rather. He’s quite an old fogey. Isn’t he, Lily?”
“I wish you’d shut up,” snapped that young person. “Can’t you see I want to read?”
But later on, viz about tiffin time, Campian being recovered enough to put in an appearance, Nesta found good and sufficient reasons for the reversal of her former verdict. As Hazel had said, the new arrival was not young; yet her own term, “quite an old fogey,” in no sense applied. And the reversal of her said verdict took this form: “He’ll do.”
This indeed, in its not very occult meaning, might have held good were the stranger even less qualified for her approval than she decided at a glance he was—for they had been quite a fortnight in camp, and on any male—save Upward, middle-aged and rangé, Nesta Cheriton’s very attractive blue eyes had not rested during precisely that period. And such deficiency had to her already come to spell boredom.
In Shâlalai the British army of all branches of the service had been at her feet, and this for obvious reasons. She was young, attractive beyond the ordinary, and a new importation. Now the feminine counterpart of the British army as represented in Shâlalai, though in some cases young, was unattractive wellnigh without exception. Furthermore, it was by no means new—wherefore Nesta had things all her own way; for Shâlalai, for social and every other purpose, was the British army—Upward and the agent to the governor-general being nearly the only civilians in the place. So in Shâlalai Nesta was happy, for the British army, having as usual when not in active service, nothing particular to do, swarmed around her in multifold adoration.