Jack Raymond, reins in hand, swung himself into his saddle lightly. 'Yes, thank God! Well! if you should hear of anything, or if you should have a chance of--say, burking anything likely to upset the apple-cart--the times are a trifle ticklish in the city--take your gratitude to me, or rather to Lady Arbuthnot, out in that.'
Chris flushed up. 'Surely,' he began volubly, 'it is the bounden duty, as I have just been writing, of the educated portion of the community to leave themselves free for reasonable criticism by supporting Government, wherever possible, by throwing heart and soul----' The Englishman, holding his impatient mount in a grip of iron, looked down with a bored expression.
'No doubt--no doubt; but the body fills a gap better on the whole. Good-bye. I'll see to the invites, and you can drop me a line if you hear anything definite.'
[CHAPTER VI]
THE MONEY OF FOOLS
'Finally, sirs,' came a high straining voice as Chris Davenant entered Hâfiz Ahmad's house, 'the educated youngster of India refuses to let his soaring aspirations remain cribbed, cabined, confined, in the cruel shackles of a political despotism without parallel in the whole history of civilisation!'
The peroration, though it seemed to afford the speaker much satisfaction, only induced that faint desultory clapping which in England is reserved for prize-days at school; that impersonal applause for the results of diligence which remembers that other pupils have yet to speak.
This was the case here, and Chris had barely wedged himself into a chair between a writing-table and a waste-paper basket before another orator was in full swing of adjective.
The row of bicycles in the verandah, and a knot of those green-box hired carriages outside on the road, had told Chris already that he had been right in calculating on an assemblage of young India; but this was a larger gathering than he had expected, and he remembered suddenly with a vague shame--since he was a prominent member of the organisation--that it must be the monthly meeting of the Society for Promoting the General Good of People. He had quite forgotten all about it; still here he was, and here was his audience for that roll of manuscript he held.
He glanced round the double room,--for both dining and drawing-room had been thrown open, rather to Miriam-bibi's relief, since she could now sit unreservedly in the screened verandah and play 'beggar my neighbour' with her foster-mother, who did duty as ayah--and recognised almost every one of note in young Nushapore.