“Go and find your sister by all means, Delany,” said Colonel Bleackley, and Brian followed his guide to the courtyard guarding the zenana door, where Richard lay on his charpoy on the verandah, with Eveleen beaming proudly at his side, Ketty beside her, and a nervous figure lurking in the shadows behind.
“Hillo, Delany!” said Richard.
“So here y’are at last, Brian!” cried Eveleen, most unjustly. “No thanks to you we’re here to meet you!”
“I believe you, ma’am! No thanks to me y’are here at all, but to your own wicked wayward will. Well, this is a sight for sore eyes! How are y’, Ambrose? Now tell me all about it, Evie.”
Shaking hands with Richard and kissing Eveleen simultaneously, Brian settled himself between them. “Now that’s first chop! Give you my word I never thought I’d have this pleasure. Sit down here, Evie, and tell me all the story of your perverse doings, and how you managed to crown ’em all by letting yourself be found at Umarganj instead of among the Codgers.”
Eveleen needed no second invitation to embark on so congenial a theme, and with Richard putting in a dry word or two here and there in a weak voice—to serve, as he remarked once, as rocks in the path of the cataract—her narrative poured forth, with characteristic disdain of order and chronology, and frequent promises to return later to such and such a point and explain—the moment for which never came. Still, having extorted permission to tell her tale in her own way, she did arrive at last at the evening of Richard’s return to consciousness, and Kamal-ud-din’s most inopportune appearance on the scene.
“If you’ll believe me, Brian, I was frightened”—with the solemnity needed to carry conviction of so improbable a fact,—“really terribly frightened. The instant before I was scolding Ambrose for not letting me know the very moment he had his senses again, and I had plenty more to say, when there stood that—that incongruous youth, glooming at us with great angry eyes, and a drawn sword in his hand!”
“And I leave you to guess what your sister did,” said Richard, taking advantage of her pause for effect.
“Why, I’d say she’d spring up and take her stand nobly in the front of you, and treat that incongruous youth to the rough side of her tongue,” said Brian.
“Well, then, I did not!” said Eveleen triumphantly. “You’ll never guess it. I’m ashamed of myself entirely when I think how I’d ever do such a thing. I just ducked down behind Ambrose, and cried, and cried, and cried!”