“Oh, Mr Chumbley, what nonsense,” said Grey, colouring. “It is too absurd!”
“So it is,” he replied; “but that isn’t.” She followed the direction of his eyes as he fixed them on Captain Hilton and Helen Perowne, and then, with the flush dying out of her cheeks, she looked at him inquiringly.
“I say, Miss Stuart,” he drawled, “don’t call me a mischief-maker, please.”
“Certainly not. Why should I?”
“Because I get chattering to people about Miss Perowne. I wish she’d marry somebody. I say, hasn’t she hooked Bertie Hilton?”
There was no reply, and Chumbley went on: “I mean to tell him he’s an idiot when he gets back to quarters to-night. I don’t believe Helen Perowne cares a sou for him. She keeps leading him on till the poor fellow doesn’t know whether he stands on his head or his heels, and by-and-by she’ll pitch him over.”
Grey bent her head a little lower, for there seemed to be a knot in the work upon which she was engaged, but she did not speak.
“I say, Miss Stuart, look at our coffee-coloured friend. Just you watch his eyes. I’ll be hanged if I don’t think there’ll be a row between him and Hilton. He looks quite dangerous!”
“Oh, Mr Chumbley!” cried Grey, gazing at him as if horrified at his words.
“Well, I shouldn’t wonder,” he continued. “Helen Perowne has been leading him on, and now he has been cut to make room for Hilton. These Malay chaps don’t understand this sort of thing, especially as they all seem born with the idea that we are a set of common white people, and that one Malay is worth a dozen of us.”