"But does the English Government allow this?" asked Mrs. Denham.
"Well, madam, the murderers make such good and cheap servants, you see. Of course they must not kill the English."
"I do not know how to believe you, Mr. Kershaw."
"Other ladies have the same difficulty at times, ma'am, but I may assure you that it is a fact. English people are perfectly safe from them. Other customs are peculiar. Whenever they wish for a wet day, they send a white elephant out to take his walks abroad, and the rain is sure to come."
"Now, Mr. Kershaw!"
"It is quite true, madam. It would be done more frequently were there more white elephants, but there are very few, and it does not answer to whitewash them. Unfortunately it is one of those cases where the converse of a fact does not work in an opposite manner. There would not be six months of rain at a stretch if sending out a black elephant would stop it."
"I daresay not," remarked Miss Mason drily. "Will you take some honey, Mr. Kershaw?"
"No, I thank you, ma'am. Burma has cured me from a boyish taste for honey. They embalm their dead with honey there; and, after a time, tap the mummies, in a spirit of true economy, and sell the honey in the bazaars to Englishmen unsuspecting of guile. Such honey is said to be peculiarly nourishing,—to eat it from the tomb of your fathers is to taste all the sweetness of friendship with your venerated ancestors. It is a poetical idea."
"Mr. Kershaw! How can you talk so? Have you no pleasanter or really beautiful things about which to tell us?"
"The most beautiful idea of which I have heard there, is the notion that people's souls are like butterflies, and that when you dream of an absent friend, it is really because your butterfly and his have escaped, for a time, from their prison-houses, and meet in dreamland for a chat."