I descended deep into flattery, and though to my own ears it sounded uncommonly like irony, he took it well. But afterwards he smiled at me, the patient smile of the great.
“What’s the good, my dear girl? You don’t know this country. You can work the flesh off your bones and nobody will thank you for it. You will never get ahead of the Company’s pets.”
The old cry of the idle and incompetent, whether in art, trade, or the professions—the uselessness of striving against injustice and favouritism!
“I consider that they have distinctly petted you, Maurice. Show them that they did well, and you’ll get more petting.”
“I suppose you would like me to be like Popper in Salisbury—always after the men to see if they’ve got their putties on straight, and whether they’re taking Epsom salts and saying their prayers regularly.”
“Oh, Maurice, you know very well that is not what I mean.”
“I don’t think you know what you mean. You are talking through your hat, my dear girl, of things you know absolutely nothing about.”
“Perhaps so,” I admitted with a humility that was far from being natural to me. “But I am only making suggestions. I can’t bear to see you wasting your life. There are such a lot of things you could do in this country, and make a big future out of. If you could get inside the inscrutable native mind, for instance, you who know so much about the natives already. Why not become an authority on them, a master of the native tongue as no other man in this country is? Dear Maurice, I want to see you start carving that career you told me about.”
(I never let him off that!) But he was entirely undisturbed.
“You talk like a book, my dear girl,” he affably responded. “But I’d rather carve a stick. Less trouble. Go and get into the native mind yourself if you think it such a mighty interesting place. And further, I wish you’d remember that I warned you on our wedding day that I would not have you interfering with my affairs. I knew well enough you’d start this blither about ambition. I must ask you once and for all to mind your own business.”