“That you were a noble lady, and quite a princess.”
“Ah!” she replied, looking at him fixedly. “How big and strong you are.”
Chumbley stared and tried to find something suitable to reply, but nothing came, and the situation seemed to him so comical that he smiled, and then, as the Princess smiled too, he laughed outright.
“Forgive my laughing,” he said, good-humouredly. “I can’t help being big; and I suppose I am strong.”
“There is the Resident!” said the lady then; and she drew her hand from Chumbley’s arm. “Ah! and the captain.”
For just then Harley stepped out from the Residency veranda to meet his visitors; and Hilton, who had found time to put on the regimental scarlet and buckle on his sword, came up to make the reception more imposing.
The Princess shook hands in the European fashion, and accepted the Resident’s arm, smiling and bowing as if excusing herself to Hilton. Then, declining to enter the house, she took a seat in the broad veranda amongst the Resident’s flowers, while her women grouped themselves behind her, letting fall the sarongs they held over their faces now that, with the exception of a single sentry, none of the common soldiers were about to gaze upon their charms.
But for her costume, the Inche Maida would have passed very well for a dark Englishwoman, and she chatted on for a time about the Resident’s flowers and her own; about her visits to the English ladies at the station; and the various European luxuries that she kept adding to her home some twenty miles up the river, where she had quite a palm-tree palace and a goodly retinue of slaves.
Both Mr Harley and Hilton knew that there was some special object in the lady’s visit; but that was scrupulously kept in the background, while coffee and liqueurs were handed round, the visitors partaking freely of these and the sweetmeats and cakes kept by the Resident for the gratification of his native friends.
“It is nearly a year since you have been to see me Mr Harley,” said the lady at last. “When will you come again?”