But once more official decorum failed to respond.
"'This, I may add, it did again and again, until the teapot was exhausted. It then pouched the whole contents of the sugar-basin, drank the milk, and smeared its head with the butter. The latter action appeared to arouse reminiscence. It repaired to my dressing-table, brushed its hair with my brushes, used my pommade hongroise, and then proceeding to the wash-hand-stand, nefariously laid hold of my tooth-brush. This, however, was too much. I rose. At the same moment my body-servant providently appeared with my hot water, and the brute, jabbering at me in unseemly fashion, made for the window, which I always keep open winter and summer. I have already requested Lieutenant Graham to remove this savage animal; and now have no option ...'"
The Adjutant laid down the letter. "It's hard on Primmer," he said, with almost superhuman solemnity; "the tooth-brush incident was----" he resumed speech after a brief pause, "and he is a good sort is old Primmer."
I was perfectly aware of the fact. Only the week before, when we were out in the jungle, he had dosed me with quinine and taken my temperature every two hours during an attack of fever and ague.
So Jennie the monkey must give way; but what the deuce was I to do with her? I did not want to have to shoot her.
"Give her to Tootsie," suggested the Adjutant, sympathetically; "I heard her say not long ago she would give anything for a monkey."
It was a brilliant idea. Miss d'Aguilar, familiarly known as Tootsie, performed the arduous duties of spinster to our little frontier station; so that afternoon, before going on duty, I rode round by "The Forest," so called, I presume, because there was not a bit of vegetation larger than a caper bush between it and the Beluchistan Hills.
I found the young lady and her mother--a frankly black-and-tan lady who looked as if she would have been more comfortable with a veil to roll round her fat person--engaged, after their wont, in entertaining some of the junior subalterns at tea. As I entered, Tootsie--a sparkling brunette with gloriously startling Titian brown hair, due to cunning applications of henna dye (there were traces of it on Mamma's hands)--was, in a high-pitched staccato voice, recounting with arch gaiety, her impressions of Calcutta, whence she had but lately returned. "Yes! I do declare the men are just sillies. Why! do not believe me, but I asked a young fellow in a Europe shop to bring me flesh-coloured stockings, and he brought me tan! Was he not a silly boy?"
The pause which inevitably followed this anecdote seemed a fitting opportunity for somewhat sentimentally offering Jennie. Had I offered a bomb the effect could not have been more disastrous. Miss grew crimson; Mamma, purple and plethoric, wondered how any gentleman could keep such a nasty brute, still less offer it as a fit companion to an innocent young girl.
Evidently Jennie had again got herself disliked; how, the junior sub. told me succinctly as we rode home.