“It’s pure magic!” Helen exclaimed. “It’s to-day week, and I’ve been asleep,” and then “We’ve been awfully happy here, George,”—an illogical statement to accompany wet eyelashes.
Even while they sat on their single chairs at their single table, which George put his elbows on, to secure it he said, the bedroom furniture decamped with many footsteps, and after the meal was over there was nothing left to testify of them but their hats laid conspicuously on a sheet of paper in the middle of the drawing-room floor. “I suppose,” said young Browne, “they think we’ve got brains enough to carry those over ourselves.”
THEIR HATS LAID CONSPICUOUSLY ON A SHEET OF PAPER.
Mrs. Browne put hers on and drove her husband to office. Then she shopped for an hour or two, and finished up by coming to tiffin with me. Then she repaired to Park-street, where she found herself established in the main, with Kasi still superintending, his locks escaping from his turban, in a state of extreme perspiration. Then she made a dainty afternoon toilet with great comfort, and by the time young Browne came home to tea it was quite ready for him in every respect, even to the wife behind the teapot, in circumstances which, except for the pictures and the bric-a-brac, might be described as normal. And of course, being an insensate sahib, he congratulated his wife—it was prodigious, and all her doing! Kasi was also commended, however, and the praise of his master fell pleasantly on the ear of Kasi, who immediately added another rupee to the amount he meant to charge for coolie-hire. Thus is life alleviated in India; thus do all its material cares devolve into a hundred brown hands and leave us free for our exalted occupations or our noble pleasure. We are unencumbered by the consideration of so much as a button. Under these beatitudes the average Anglo-Indian career ought to be one of pure spirit and intellect, but it is not so—not singularly so.
“What we must be thoroughly on our guard against,” said young Browne in the top flat at his second cup, “is seeing too much of the Lovitts. They’re not a bad sort if you keep them at a proper distance; I don’t believe for an instant there’s any harm in little Mrs. Jack; but it won’t do to be too intimate. They’ll be as troublesome as sparrows if we are.”
“There’s one thing we’ll have to look out for,” said Mr. Jack Lovitt in the bottom flat at his third muffin, “and that is being too chummy with the Brownes; they’re all right so long as they stay upstairs, but we won’t encourage them to come down too often. We’ll have Mrs. B. gushing all over the place if we do. They’ll have to understand they’ve only rented the top flat.”
“They’ll always know what we have for dinner,” remarked the spouse in the top flat.
“They’ll see every soul that comes to the house,” said the spouse in the bottom flat.
“It isn’t the slightest concern of theirs,” replied the lord upstairs.