“The implication being,” returned Mr. Ancram sweetly, “that I have nothing else to do.”
Mrs. Daye compressed her lips in the manner of one whose patience is at an end. “It would serve you perfectly right,” she exclaimed, “if I didn’t tell you what a long review of it I saw the other day in one of the home papers.”
Ancram looked up with an almost imperceptible accession of interest.
“How nice!” he said lightly. “A fellow out here always feels himself in luck when his odds and ends get taken up at home. You don’t happen to remember the paper—or the date?”
“I’m almost sure it was the Times,” Mrs. Daye replied, with rather an accentuation of rejoiceful zeal; “but Richard can tell you. It was he who drew my attention to the notice.”
Mr. Ancram’s eyebrows underwent a slight contraction. “Notice” did not seem to be a felicitous word.
“Oh, thanks,” he said. “Never mind; one generally comes across those things sooner or later.”
“I say, Ancram,” put in Mr. St. George, who had been listening on Mrs. Daye’s left, “you Asiatic Society fellows won’t get as much out of Church for your investigations as you did out of Spence.”
Ancram looked fixedly at a porcelain cherub that moored a boatful of pink-and-white confectionery to the nearest bank of the Viceregal roses. “Sir Griffiths was certainly generous,” he said. “He gave Pierson a quarter of a lakh, for instance, to get his ethnological statistics together. It was easy to persuade him to recognise the value of these things.”
“It won’t be easy to get this man to recognise it,” persisted St. George. “He’s the sort of fellow who likes sanitation better than Sanscrit. He’s got a great scheme on for improving the village water-supply for Bengal, and I hear he wants to reorganise the vaccination business. Great man for the people!”