“That vieux rose brocade that I got out from home for the Drawing-Room—the more fool I!—and that gray shimmery crêpe that you like; and another, a mouse-coloured sort of thing, with gold bands, that I don’t think you know—I’ve never had it on. Frifri sent it home with a bill for a hundred and fifty if you please—and I gave her the foundation. However, I’ve been paid for it, and Frifri hasn’t, and she can jolly well wait!”
“What did you get for it?” asked Helen.
“Eighty-five—wasn’t I lucky? That new little Mrs. Niblit—jute or indigo or something—heaps of money. Lady Blebbins bought the other two for Julia. She’s up in Allahabad, you know, where the fact of my having swaggered around in them all season won’t make any difference. What a pretty little flannel blouse that is of yours, my dear—I wish I could afford one like it!”
“It cost three eight altogether,” said Mrs. Browne, “the dhurzie made it last week. He took two days, but I think he dawdled.”
“Three eight’s a good deal, I think, for a blouse,” returned Mrs. Lovitt, the experienced. “Dear me, what a horrible thing it is to be poor! And nothing but boxes in that upper flat! Three rooms and two bath-rooms, going, going, gone—I wish it were! What do you say, Mrs. Browne? Ninety-five rupees only!”
“It’s cheap,” said Helen; “I’ll ask George.”
She did ask George, at the shortest possible intervals for three days, and when the subject had been allowed to drop for a quarter of an hour George asked her. It became the supreme question, and the consideration they devoted to it might have revised the Permanent Settlement or decided our right to occupy the Pamirs.
There were more pros and cons than I have patience to go into, and I daresay they would have been discussing it still, if Mrs. Browne had not thought fit to decline her breakfast on the morning of the third day. Whereat young Browne suspected fever—he hoped not typhoid—but the place certainly smelt feverish, now that he came to smell it—and there was no doubt that it would be an economy to take Mrs. Lovitt’s flat, and forthwith they took it.
Moving house in India is a light affliction and but for a moment. The sahib summoned Kasi, and announced to him that the change would be made to-morrow, “and in thy hand all things will be.” Kasi received particulars of the address in Park-street, salaamed, saying “Very good,” and went away more sorrowful than he seemed, for he was comfortable and mighty where he was, and change was not often a good thing. Besides, he knew Lovitt sahib that he had a violent temper and reprehensible modes of speech—it might not be good to come often under the eye of Lovitt sahib. And he would be obliged to tell the mallie his friend that it would be to depart, which would split his heart in two. However, it was the sahib’s will and there was nothing to say, but a great deal to do. Moreover, there might be backsheesh, which alleviated all things.
Next morning the Brownes found themselves allowed one table and two chairs for breakfast purposes, and six coolies sat without, dusty and expectorant, waiting for those. Kasi, at the gate, directed a departing train, each balancing some portion of their worldly goods upon his head, Kasi, watchful and stern, the protector of his master’s property. The dining-room was dismantled, the drawing-room had become a floor space enclosed by high white walls with nail marks in them. There was a little heap of torn paper in one corner, and cobwebs seemed to have been spun in the night in half the windows.