“Oh, we’ll have another mutiny,” Mr. Sayter remarked; “it’s quite on the cards. But you must not be alarmed, Mr. Batcham. It won’t be,” he added irrepressibly, “till after you go home.”
The conversation turned upon light literature, and Mr. Batcham contributed to it the fact that he understood that man Besant was making a lot of money. Helen had been reading the memoirs of Mdlle. Bashkirtseff, and had to say that one half she didn’t understand, and the other half she didn’t like. “And when,” said Mr. Sayter, “does your book come out, Mr. Batcham?”
“I haven’t said that I was writing one,” Mr. Batcham replied, smiling coyly.
“It isn’t necessary,” declared young Browne, “we should expect a book from you, Mr. Batcham, as a matter of course.”
“Oh, well, I expect I shall have to own to some little account of my experience,” confessed Mr. Batcham. “My friends have urged me to do something of the kind. If the illustrations can be got ready, I daresay it will be out in time to catch the spring market.”
“Don’t forget the illustration of the cobra milking the cow,” said George Browne, infected by Mr. Sayter; “it will add a great deal to the interest of the volume without detracting seriously from its reliability.”
“No,” said Mr. Batcham, “I haven’t got a photograph of that, I’m sorry to say. The illustrations will be entirely reproduced from photographs. I’ve got a beauty of the Taj, taken by magnesium light.”
“Have you decided on a title, Mr. Batcham?” Helen inquired, playing with the orange-blossom in her finger-bowl.
Mr. Batcham looked carefully round him, and observed that the kitmutgars had left the room. “Don’t mention it,” he said, “because somebody else may get hold of it, but I think I’ll christen the book either ‘My Trot Through India,’ or ‘India, Its Past, Present, and Future.’”
“Capital!” exclaimed Mr. Sayter, skipping nimbly to hold back the purdah for the exit of Mrs. Browne. “You can’t really dispense with either title, and if I were you I should use them both!”