“I—I think I liked it better as it used to be,” he said hesitatingly. Eveleen sighed loudly.
“Some people are never satisfied!” she lamented, then her tone changed. “And y’are come to take me back with y’at last? Oh, don’t tell me y’are not!”
“I—I really can’t say, my dear. We ain’t our own masters in Khemistan nowadays—I suppose you know?”
“That Sir Harry Lennox is coming up? I know that, of course. Brian’s safely on the Staff now—you have heard?”
“I saw it gazetted—yes.” The tone firmly declined to congratulate either superior or subordinate. “Well, then, you must see that things are altered. It don’t lie with me to give you leave to come up the river—nor even with Bayard now.”
“Sure it’s all the same thing, if it lies with Sir Harry. But why do you talk as if he would change things?”
“His appointment must supersede Bayard—may supersede all of us. Surely you perceive that? Bayard and Bayard’s men ain’t likely to be here long.”
“I don’t see why. I believe Colonel Bayard and Sir Harry will like one another greatly.”
“Fall on each other’s necks and swear eternal friendship, in fact? Well, my dear, I hope so, but I doubt it. Old Lennox is Maryport’s man, and if he comes here, it’s to further Maryport’s policy, and we all know what that is.”
“But Sir Harry don’t see eye to eye with Lord Maryport by any means. Brian says he can’t speak with patience of the way his plan for the Ethiopian Expedition was bungled at the end—leaving the ladies prisoners and all. If they hadn’t been rescued, ’twas all the talk in Poonah that he’d have called out the Governor-General.”