The Bride and the Bridegroom came out into the verandah after dinner, in order that the smoke of Georgie Porgie’s cheroots might not hang in the new drawing-room curtains.
‘What is that noise down there?’ said the Bride. Both listened.
‘Oh,’ said Georgie Porgie, ‘I suppose some brute of a hillman has been beating his wife.’
‘Beating—his—wife! How ghastly!’ said the Bride. ‘Fancy YOUR beating ME!’ She slipped an arm round her husband’s waist, and, leaning her head against his shoulder, looked out across the cloud-filled valley in deep content and security.
But it was Georgina crying, all by herself, down the hillside, among the stones of the water-course where the washermen wash the clothes.
NABOTH
[Footnote: Copyright, 1891, by MACMILLAN & Co.]
This was how it happened; and the truth is also an allegory of Empire.
I met him at the corner of my garden, an empty basket on his head, and an unclean cloth round his loins. That was all the property to which Naboth had the shadow of a claim when I first saw him. He opened our acquaintance by begging. He was very thin and showed nearly as many ribs as his basket; and he told me a long story about fever and a lawsuit, and an iron cauldron that had been seized by the court in execution of a decree. I put my hand into my pocket to help Naboth, as kings of the East have helped alien adventurers to the loss of their kingdoms. A rupee had hidden in my waistcoat lining. I never knew it was there, and gave the trove to Naboth as a direct gift from Heaven. He replied that I was the only legitimate Protector of the Poor he had ever known.