Noel set her down and rose. "My dear Mrs. Musgrave, I've been hunting for you everywhere. Have you had any tea?"
She smiled at him with amused reproof. A very sweet smile had Mrs. Musgrave, but it was never very mirthful. She had lost all her mirth with her youth. Though she could not have been much over thirty, her hair was silver white.
"I was only in the next room," she said. "Yes, thank you; the padre gave me tea. We must be going. Peggy and I. Will left some time ago, directly after the bride and bridegroom."
"Ah, Will is a paragon of industry. I believe he thinks more of that beastly old reservoir of his than of the whole population of Sharapura put together. But surely you needn't go yet? Don't!" pleaded Noel, with his most persuasive smile.
"No, don't let's, Mummy!" begged the child, clinging to her hero's hand.
"Noel and me, we're goin' to be married, we are."
"So we are," said Noel. "And we're going to church on the Rajah's state elephant, and we're going to make him trumpet all the way there and all the way back. I hope we are not springing it on you too suddenly," he added, with a laugh. "It's the usual thing, isn't it, for the best man to marry the chief bridesmaid?"
"I should say it depended a little on their respective ages," smiled Mrs. Musgrave. "Are you going to find my 'rickshaw? It is later than I thought, and I am expecting visitors."
"Ah, I know," said Noel. "Captain and Mrs. Nick of Wara, isn't it?"
"Not Mrs. Nick," she corrected him. "I wish it had been. She is my greatest friend. But she can't leave England because of their child."
"There's a lady of some description coming in his train," asserted Noel.
"I have it on unimpeachable authority."