Arthur had presented me to his hero almost apologetically, and I had since improved the acquaintance considerably.
I gathered from the Colonel that the Afghan frontier was not overrun with European ladies to any great extent, and certainly the little man’s manner on being transported to a place where a full numerical half of the population (and a much larger proportion in every other respect) consisted of women, was very pleasant to watch. The luxury of seeing them was almost enough for him, and when it came to the intimacies of conversation the little warrior’s embarrassment was as delightful as young Ted Carmichael’s.
“Gad, Butterfield,” he said, as we threaded Piccadilly one evening, “this is home, you know! It’s like one big family—you feel as if you can speak to any of them!”
The Colonel’s observation was perhaps truer than he had any idea of; but I couldn’t dash his boyish pleasure.
“Yes,” I replied. “I almost envy you the delight, Coke, of having the full measure all at once. It is to you what tiger-shooting would be to me, did my tastes run in that direction.”
“Gad,” he replied (he seldom replied without “Gad”), “it’s marvellous! And all with faces as white as my own, Butterfield!”
I smiled, looking at the piece of tropical cookery he called white, but let him run on.
“Do you know,” he said, “there was Powell’s wife, and poor Jack Dennis’s widow, and the adjutant’s sister; and, by Gad, except for a dahi that Powell kept (Powell’s wife was never strong), there wasn’t another woman, Butterfield, in the whole damned station! And Winifred Dennis didn’t amount to much. But here——”
He never seemed to get accustomed to it. Had a London fog stamped the metropolitan complexion indelibly and universally black, Coke would have given a sigh, as knowing that his glimpse was too good to have lasted, and returned to his old order of things. The rustle of a silk skirt was an unstaled wonder to him; and the contrast between what he called the “real European baby-ribbon sort of thing” and the “infernal blouse and puggaree business” never failed to entertain him.
With Miss Dixon he was soon on good terms, but with most other ladies, Mrs. Loring Chatterton first of all, his diffidence was marked. His chivalrous devotion was Quixotic, but most of them would have bartered it, I am sure, for a more work-a-day and less punctilious style of attention. Mrs. Loring, indeed, said so.