The new Mrs. Browne received our congratulations with shy distance after it was all over. She looked round at the big stucco church with its white pillars and cane chairs, and at our unfamiliar faces, with a little pitiful smile. I had, at the moment, a feminine desire to slap Mrs. Macdonald for having asked us. And all the people of the Rectory, who ought to have been at the wedding, were going about their ordinary business, with only now and then a speculative thought of this. Everybody who really cared was four thousand miles away, and unaware. We could not expect either of them to think much of our perfunctory congratulations, although Mr. Browne expressed himself very politely to the contrary in the valuable sentiments he uttered afterwards in connection with champagne cup and the Peliti wedding cake, on Mrs. Macdonald’s veranda.
They had a five days’ honeymoon, so far as the outer world was concerned, and they spent it at Patapore. Darjiling, as young Browne was careful to explain to Helen, was the proper place, really the thing to do, but it took twenty-six hours to get to Darjiling, and twenty-six hours to get back, and nobody wanted to plan off a five days’ honeymoon like that. Patapore, on the contrary, was quite accessible, only six hours by mail.
“Is it a hill-station?” asked Helen, when they discussed it.
“Not precisely a hill-station, darling, but it’s on rising ground—a thousand feet higher than this.”
“Is it an interesting place?” she inquired.
“I think it ought to be, under the circumstances.”
“George! I mean are there any temples there, or anything?”
“I don’t remember any temples. There is a capital dâk-bungalow.”
“And what is a dâk-bungalow, dear? How short you cut your hair, you dear old thing!”
“That was provisional against your arrival, darling—so you couldn’t pull it. A dâk-bungalow is a sort of government hotel, put up in unfrequented places where there aren’t any others, for the accommodation of travellers.”