"It is a capital idea, Miss Ackworth, and I will carry it out to-night when the people in the village are all asleep. Upon my word, if it were in accordance with military discipline, I should feel disposed to hand over my command to you, for your brain works quicker than mine does, by a long way."
"I am quite content to serve under you," she said. "I dare say I shall have other suggestions to make later on; some, no doubt, will be possible, others the contrary, but I shall submit them for your approval or rejection, knowing very well that some of them would be impracticable. Now look here: I shall find it frightfully dull taking my meals by myself, and I don't suppose you will find it lively, so I wish you would join me on the veranda of our bungalow."
"I don't know, Miss Ackworth, whether your father would quite approve of that."
"Nonsense!" the girl laughed; "you know I am not in any way to be regarded as a young lady yet. Besides, my father was going to send me very soon down to Bombay, and from there to England, under your escort, which shows that he considers you a prudent and trustworthy guardian for me. If I were at home all day by myself I am sure that I should get the jumps. My brain is always busy, and, as father's representative here, I think I ought to be able constantly to confer with you; and I am sure it will be more pleasant for you to sit in our veranda and smoke your pipe and put up with my chatter, than it would be for you to be moping by yourself in the ante-room. If you like I will promise to talk as childishly as I can, and with all due respect to you as commander of the garrison."
Carter laughed. "Very well, Miss Ackworth; it would certainly be a great deal more pleasant for me, and you must take the responsibility when the major returns."
"I will do that," she said; "my father must see that it would be ridiculous for us each to be taking our meals alone all the time that he was away."
"Do you know, Charlie," Nita said on the second evening, "I have always thought you rather slow, and now I see that you are really nothing of the sort."
Carter laughed. "I am quite conscious that I am slow, Miss Ackworth. I am not quick in taking in ideas, or in expressing my own. I often wish that it wasn't so, but I have lately been getting better. I can't chaff as most of them can, but I find myself able to join in general conversation more easily. Some day, I dare say, I shall become quite a conversationalist."
"How very serious you are!" she said; "you talk with me as if I were a woman, and not, as most of the others do, as a little girl to be chaffed."