“No, of course not. How could it? Haven’t I been telling them for thirty years that we should have to reconquer India if they didn’t mend their ways, and they only called me croaker and prophet of evil? Well, time brings about its revenges. For the last ten years John would cheerfully have seen me hanged on the nearest tree of my own planting, and now he steals my officers to keep his province quiet. Go, Haigh, certainly; and every man I can spare shall go, as Pater says. We have got lazy and luxurious up here of late. It’ll do some of these youngsters good to go back to the old days, when a man’s life and the fate of the province depended on his eye and his sword. Not but that I have a fine set of young fellows just now. They all want to come up here—flattering, isn’t it?—and I have to thin ’em out.” He laughed, and so did Sir Dugald, who had heard strange tales of the General’s methods of weeding out the recruits who offered themselves to him. “But how long can you stay, Haigh? Only to-night? Oh, nonsense! Where are your things?”
“I left them at Porter’s, sir.”
“How dare you? I’ll have them fetched away at once. Send a chit to Porter, and say I’ll break him if he tries to detain them. But tell him to come to dinner, and we’ll have Tarleton and Harris and Jones, and yarn about the old times—all of us that are left of the old lot.”
He broke off with an involuntary sigh, and Sir Dugald wrote his note. Presently General Keeling turned to him with a twinkle in his eye. “Don’t tell Lady Haigh on any account, but I can’t help feeling relieved that she isn’t coming up just yet. I know she’ll want to give me good advice about my little Missy there, and Tarleton and I are so sinfully proud of the way we have brought her up that we won’t stand any advice on the subject.”
Surprised, Sir Dugald followed the direction of his eyes, to see in a corner, almost hidden by a huge despatch-box, a small girl with a curious pink-and-white frock and a shock of dark hair.
“She would play there quietly all day, never coming out unless I call her,” said General Keeling. “If she isn’t with me, she’s with Tarleton, watching him at his work. He gives her an old medicine-bottle or two, and some sand and water, and she’s as happy as possible, pretending to make up pills and mixtures. Or she begs a bit of paper from me, and writes for ever so long, and brings it to me to be sealed up in an official envelope—making up returns, you see. Missy,” raising his voice, “come here and speak to Captain Haigh. He held you in his arms when you were only two or three days old, and you have often heard about him in your Godmamma’s letters.”
The child obeyed at once, disclosing the fact that her embroidered muslin frock (which Sir Dugald had a vague recollection had been sent her by his wife) had been lengthened and adorned by the tailor at his own discretion by the addition of three flounces of common pink English print. She held out a little brown hand to the stranger in silence.
“Does us credit, doesn’t she?” asked her father, smoothing back the elf-locks from her forehead. Sir Dugald’s domestic instincts were in revolt at the idea of the child’s being brought up by two men, without a woman at hand even to give advice; but there was such anxiety in General Keeling’s voice that he crushed down his feelings and ventured on the remark that Missy was a very fine girl for her age.
“We are not very successful with her hair,” the father went on. “The ayah tries to curl it, but either Missy is too restless, or Dulya doesn’t know quite the right way to set about it. It never looks smooth and shiny like children’s hair in pictures.”
Sir Dugald wisely waived the question, feeling that he was not an authority on the subject. “Can she—isn’t she—er—old enough to talk?” he asked, with becoming diffidence.