“Though I wish she wouldn’t spoil them with charcoal the way she does,” remarked Mrs. Macdonald with amiable unction. “She doesn’t need to, you know.”
“How do you do, Captain Delytis?” and Mrs. Macdonald bent very much forward on the sofa in recognizing a young man in blue lapels, who suddenly reined himself in as it were, responded profoundly to her salutation, and then hurried on. “That’s Captain Delytis,” she informed Helen. “One of the A.-D.-C.’s. Such a dear! He called on me twice last cold weather, and I was darwaza bund each time. Wasn’t it a shame!”
“I wouldn’t be too remorseful,” remarked young Browne, not without malice. He had found Mrs. Macdonald darwaza bund frequently, and had all a black coat’s aversion to the superior charms of blue lapels. “A.-D.-C.’s have a way, you know, of finding out first.”
“Don’t be nasty, George Browne,” responded Mrs. Macdonald, “besides in this case it doesn’t apply, for Captain Delytis told me himself how sorry he was. I daresay they have to resort to that sort of thing occasionally though, poor things. They have so much to do.”
“Do!” remarked young Browne, with the peculiar contempt mercantile pursuits so often inspire for the army and the civil service in Calcutta. “They order dinner, I believe.”
“They have charge of the invitations to everything, so you’d better just make him properly civil to them,” said Mrs. Macdonald, turning to Helen, who responded, with perfectly feminine appreciation of the advice, that she would indeed.
“I wonder,” continued Mrs. Macdonald thoughtfully, “why Mrs. Alec Forbes didn’t see me just now. Did you notice her?—that tall woman in the pompadourish gown that passed just now. They say she’s getting too swagger to see lots of people now that the Simlaites have taken her up so tremendously, but she’s generally as sweet as possible to me. They tell a funny story about Mrs. Forbes and Mrs. Perth Macintyre—you’ve seen Mrs. Perth Macintyre: perhaps you can imagine how patronising and interfering the old lady is! Well, it was when Mrs. Forbes first came out, and Calcutta wasn’t at all disposed to take to her—a little of the tar-brush, you know, and that doesn’t go down here. But everybody liked Alec Forbes, and she had a lot of money, and people came round. Mrs. Perth Macintyre decided to come round too, and one night at dinner, when people were discussing this very function, she undertook to encourage Mrs. Forbes about it. ‘I daresay you’ll be a bit timid, my dear,’ said she, ‘but you’ll just have to go through it like the rest of us.’ ‘Oh,’ said Mrs. Forbes casually, ‘I daresay it’s nothing to St. James’s!’ Mrs. Perth Macintyre was sat on for once—she had never been presented at home. Wasn’t it good?”
“I can’t see what earthly difference it made,” said young Browne, but his wife could, and turned another page in Part II., Feminine: of the Book of Anglo-India.
“Why, George,” she said presently, “who’s that?” her husband having emitted a gruff “How do!” as a gentleman passed them.
“That? Oh, nobody much! Sir William Peete.”