This was almost incredibly wonderful, for Mr. Chapel was one of our most fervent Oriolists. It was as full of points as a hedgehog; I could not count them all——
Then he turned on me the usual look of gleeful solemnity, and I knew we both wondered who would be the first to tell Aggie.
“Poor Robbie,” he said. “I never knew anybody the least like him. He will be a sacred memory to us, will he not?”
Mrs. Withers shook her head, regretfully, smiling.
“And the last time he called,” she said, “I was not at home. Of course, if he had only told me he was coming, I would have thrown over any engagement to be there, but, as you may not know, he would never use a telephone. It will always give me a little heartache to think that I was not there the last time.”
Mr. Chapel let his eyes wander admirably before he caught mine again.
“It is only human to feel that,” he observed in the best style.
IN THE DARK
Reginald Case, newly promoted to the rank of Captain in the 43rd Native Cavalry of the Indian Army, was picking his way back to his bungalow by the light of a somewhat ill-burning lantern from the regimental mess-room where he had dined. It was early in July, the long-delayed rains had broken at Haziri, in the Central Provinces, ten days before, and it was an imprudent man who would venture on a mere field-path like this at night without some illumination for his steps, lest inadvertently he might tread on a meditative and deadly kerait, with murder behind its stale small eyes, or step on the black coils of some hooded cobra. Only a few days before, Case had found one such in the bathroom of his bungalow, curled up on the mat within a few inches of his bare foot, when he went there to bathe before dinner, and he had no desire to give his nerves any further test of steadiness under such circumstances.
To-day there had been a break in the prodigious deluge, and all the afternoon the midsummer sun had blazed from a clear sky, causing all vegetable things to sprout with magical rapidity. This path, which yesterday had been a bare track over the fields, was now covered with springing herbs; the parade-ground, which for the last week had been but a sea of viscous mud, was clad in a mantle of delicate green blades, and the tamarisks and neem trees were studded with swelling buds among the dead and dripping foliage of the spring. A similar animation had tingled through the insect world, and as Case passed across the couple of fields that lay between the mess-room and his bungalow, a swarm of evil flies dashed themselves against the glass of his lantern. Overhead, since sunset, the clouds had gathered densely again across the vault of the sky, but to the east an arch of clear and star-lit heavens was dove-coloured with the approaching moonrise. Against it the shapes of silhouetted trees stood sharp and black in the windless and stifling calm.