“But I’ll only waste your money and bring you to debt and disgrace. You’ve said so, often. Will you tell me now, am I the sort of wife to sit on the verandah darning your stockings and dropping salt tears on them because you’re away, thinking back over the future and looking forward to the past?—no, I mean it’s t’other way about. But anyhow, the sort of wife I am is the one that rides knee to knee with you in the ranks, and takes her turn in keeping watch at night——”
“And can never keep awake if she tries! Won’t do, my dear. You must remember you ain’t an Amazon, nor yet Joan of Arc, but the wife of a British officer in the nineteenth century—a much more prosaic person. The verandah is your lot, I fear, but we won’t insist on the darning. I trust I ain’t unreasonable.”
“Unreasonable? The man that insisted on wearing stockings of my darning would be stark staring mad!” cried Eveleen, with terrific emphasis. “And will you tell me, Major Ambrose, if you wanted that sort of wife, why you married me?”
“Oh, pray, my dear, don’t let us have that over again! I gave you my reason once, and if it don’t satisfy you, I’m sorry, for I have no other to offer. Now behave like a sensible woman, and make up your mind to be happy and employ yourself usefully in my absence. Come!” with a bright idea, “how would you like to buy another horse and begin to break him in?”
“I’ll remember that!” gloomily, yet with a distinct lightening of the gloom. “But I warn you, if this is the way you answer me, you won’t find me asking you another time. I’ll just come.”
“Oh, very well. If I know anything of the General, you’ll find yourself sent back under escort, after a lecture which will prove to you once for all that he has a rough side to his tongue, though ladies don’t often feel it.”
“If you knew anything of me, you’d know you were merely inviting me to prove you wrong. You’ll see!” He might have been excused for imagining she had some specific plan in view, but her mind was roaming vaguely over various possibilities of making herself disagreeable.
CHAPTER XII.
AN ERROR OF JUDGMENT.
Life at Sahar after the departure of the expedition was every whit as dull as Eveleen had known it would be. For a whole week she held out obstinately against that tempting suggestion of Richard’s that she should buy another horse—for the sole reason that the suggestion was his. But involuntarily her mind was noting and registering the points of possible colts as she passed them, and when the week was over, she felt—relief mingling with triumph in having resisted for so long—that the curb of self-restraint might be relaxed. Perhaps the fact that she had just received a letter from Richard helped to lighten her spirits, though his letters might best be described by the term arid, while Brian’s—save for one scrawl on the back of an old official envelope—were represented by a postscript added to her husband’s, “Your brother desires his fond love, and will be certain to write to-morrow.” But Eveleen was aware of her own deficiencies as a letter-writer, and with unusual fairness, expected no better from other people.
She was just going to dress for her evening ride, intending to requisition the escort of one of the subalterns left unwillingly at Sahar for a visit to a tribal camp not far off, where she had taken note of a likely-looking steed, when the sound of an arrival outside, and a masculine voice enquiring for the Beebee, brought her hastily to the verandah, anticipating a messenger from the front. But it was Colonel Bayard who ran up the steps to greet her—debonair and friendly as ever, and with an air of increased cheerfulness which was almost elation.