She shook her head again. "It's poisonous--besides, it doesn't do--to leave the beaten path."
"Try!"
There was a pause; for the undercurrent, which had seemed to sweep each trivial word to another meaning, seemed suddenly to sweep this man and woman within touch--dangerous touch--of each other.
"What are you two talking about?" asked Boy's mother, coming towards them. "What a lovely cross, Muriel! And why, please, should Christmas in India be skittles, Colonel Gould?"
He laughed. "How stern you look! I wish I could get that righteous indignation up for orderly room. I need it!"
"My husband never found the regiment difficult to manage," interrupted the wife of its absent commander jealously.
"Nor do I," retorted its present head, "but--" he paused, not caring to explain that he, an outsider sent but lately to drill a corps back to the discipline it had lost after her husband's departure, had naturally a very different task.
"Hullo, Boy!" he said, to change the subject, "that is a jolly little sword! Who gave it you?"
"Hirabul Khan gaved it me," replied the child. "When I'm Colonel, he'sh going to be my risshildar, 'cos you shee he was my Daddy's orderly first, an' then Daddy made him--oh, lotsh of fings."
"He'll have to look out if he doesn't want to lose some things," said Colonel Gould, sharply; then answering a vexed look of Boy's mother, continued: "He was a protégé of your husband's, I know--but he really has wind in his head. For his own sake it must be got out. I put him under arrest to-day, and told him squarely I'd have to block his promotion."