“Didn’t light it. Dropped the match, I was so startled. Last match I had, too. I’ve got that against Tubbs. Oh, I must speak to Tubbs!”
“If you speak to Tubbs,” Mr. Batcham put in prudently, “don’t mention my name. I am glad to find myself wrong in this case. But Mr. Banerjee assures me—”
The pony leaped forward under the cut of young Browne’s whip, and Mr. Batcham very nearly tumbled out of the back seat. Young Browne didn’t apologise. “Do you mean to say,” said he in a red fury, “that you have been talking to a beastly baboo about the white women of Calcutta? It—it isn’t usual.”
It was as much for their own amusement as for their guest’s edification that the Brownes asked Mr. Sayter to dinner to meet Mr. Batcham. Mr. Sayter came unsuspectingly, and I have reason to believe that he has not yet forgiven the Brownes. Nobody in Calcutta could hate a large red globe-trotter more ferociously than Mr. Sayter did. And the Brownes failed to palliate their offence by asking anybody else. They were a square party, and Mr. Batcham sat opposite Mr. Sayter, who went about afterwards talking about his recent narrow escape from suffocation.
Mr. Batcham welcomed Mr. Sayter as if he had been in his own house or his own “works.” He shook Mr. Sayter warmly by his slender and frigid hand and said he was delighted to meet him—it was always a pleasure to meet representative men, and his young friends had told him that Mr. Sayter was a very representative man indeed, standing almost at the head of his department.
“Oh, goodness gracious!” exclaimed Mr. Sayter, sinking into a chair. “Fancy being talked about like that now.”
“I have a thousand things to ask you,” continued Mr. Batcham with increasing cordiality, “a thousand questions are surging in my brain at this very moment. This India of yours is a wonderful place, sir!”
“Well,” said Mr. Sayter, “I suppose I can’t help that. But it isn’t as wonderful as it used to be—that’s one comfort.”
“I’m afraid,” Mr. Batcham remarked with seriousness, “that your eyes are blinded. I’ve met numbers of people out here—people of more than average perception—whose eyes seem to me to be blinded to the beauties of Ind.”
“Probably affected by the dust of Ind,” put in young Browne. “Will you take my wife in, Mr. Sayter?”