“Sally it is. Sally’s the girl for my money.”
“But she’s nothing but a little bit of a child yet. Is it thirteen she is—or fourteen?”
“How’d I know—or care? That child is as old—as ancient. ‘My wise little Sally,’ her papa calls her, and she turns the stubborn old ruffian round her finger as easy as winkin’. And to hear her lecture your brother, my dear creature you’d think she was her own grandmother! Give her a year or two, and I’ll marry her without so much as a ‘by your leave!’ even if General is G.-G. by that time!”
“Perhaps she won’t have you, my dear fellow.”
“Then it’s a bachelor I’ll be all my born days. Do you take me, ma’am? It’s a case! What in the world’s that?”
“That” was a nightcapped head—the body presumably attached thereto remaining discreetly out of sight—which appeared at a doorway. “Three-quarters of an hour!” said a sepulchral voice. “And Mrs Ambrose still an invalid. Mr Delany, will you be so good as to return to your quarters, and let your sister go to bed?”
“I will, ma’am, I will!” Brian winked largely at Eveleen. “I’m a sad fellow to have brought you here to turn me out, but ask my sister if all I’ve told her ain’t worth it.”
“Begone, graceless wretch!” Eveleen was quoting from the melodrama—miscalled historical—recently staged by the Bab-us-Sahel Dramatic Club, and Brian, recognising the style common to melodrama, answered in the same vein.
“Cruel but virtuous dame, at thy command I go!” and went.
The few days which covered Sir Henry Lennox’s sojourn at Bab-us-Sahel were well filled. He saw the outbreak of cholera stamped out, he reviewed the troops, he set on foot plans for improving the landing conditions, providing a water-supply, and laying out large vegetable gardens, with a view to preventing the scurvy from which the garrison suffered. For the present a ration of lime-juice was to be served out, but it was clear, from the arrangements made for the future, that the town was to remain in British hands, and knowing people opined once more that Sir Harry’s visit was to end in the annexation of Khemistan. This did not appear to be his own opinion, however. He was come, he said quite frankly, to make the Khans keep their treaties—with such modification as might seem called for. He had not come to fight, and he did not for a moment believe that the Khans would provoke a rupture, but he was quite certain he was going to put an end to the anomalous condition of things that had obtained hitherto. It was in his mind, also, that the large British force at Sahar—far up the river—must be badly in need of inspection by a competent authority, and this need it was his purpose to supply. The requirements of Bab-us-Sahel having therefore been observed, noted and pigeon-holed at lightning speed, the General set out on his way up the river. To the relief of Richard Ambrose, who had been rather inclined to fear, from the tone of his references to the Khans, that his mode of dealing with them would be to knock their heads together and bid them listen to reason, Sir Harry consented to pay a visit of ceremony to Qadirabad in the course of his journey. Thus it was only natural that he should offer the Ambroses a passage in his steamer, since the Khans might well feel alarmed if he was not accompanied by any representative of their friend Colonel Bayard, and Eveleen and her husband returned up the river in state.