"I'd dearly love to act sponsor to a boy like you in the beginning of his career, Jack," she cried with a tender inflection of the voice. "By the way, I'm going to call you 'Jack'—may I?"
"Certainly, if you care to," he returned awkwardly.
"Oh, you are priceless! What an opportunity you missed for a pretty speech!" and she laid her hand caressingly on his for a moment to emphasise her delight in him.
"Why? what should I have said?" he asked, laughing boyishly, and wincing under her touch. The suggestion of intimacy in her manner somewhat embarrassed him.
"I should like to see you a few years hence when your education is complete," she returned, evading his question teasingly. "But you mustn't marry, or you will be utterly spoilt."
"There is no immediate prospect of that!" he said laughing and giving away the fact that he was heart-whole. "But won't you take up the job tonight and begin instructing me?"
"I am sorely tempted to," she replied, smiling affectionately on him. "You must really learn your possibilities. They are limitless. After that, everything will come naturally,—assurance, the wit to grasp opportunities, and a bold initiative, without which a man is no good."
"No good?—for what?" he pressed ingenuously.
"To pass the time with, of course, O most adorable infant!" she laughed silently, returning his look with an expression of half-veiled admiration.
In stations where officials came and went with meteoric suddenness owing to the reshuffling of the governmental pack of human cards, friendships were as sudden as they were transient. Jack Darling having arrived at Muktiarbad while Mrs. Fox was at a hill station, their acquaintance was only in its initial stage.