"Oh, don't be an ass. What do medals for mathematics matter here? You are bigger than I am, and heaps better to look at. In fact, my dear Bob, I might even say of you that you were the least little bit showy." Gerrard was falling back insensibly into the old chaffing tone, but a look on his friend's face warned him that the time was not yet quite ripe for this, and he went on hastily. "At any rate, each of us has advantages on his side, we'll say. Then let us fight fair. You weren't thinking of proposing again every time you see her? In that case, it would soon be darwaza band[2] when you called, I'm afraid. Let us agree not to make any move, either of us, for a year—or six months, if you insist upon it," as he read protest in Charteris's eye, "and then draw lots which shall speak first. If she accepts that one, the matter is settled—it's the fortune of war; if not, then the other has his turn. If she refuses both, then ditto ditto at the end of another six months."
Charteris, leaning against a pillar of the verandah, looked down at him and laughed. "If I didn't know you for a cunning old weasel, I should put you down as jolly green, Hal. Suppose she should meanwhile intimate, in the most unimaginably proper and delicate way, a preference for either of us?"
"For the present one or the absent one?" asked Gerrard drily. "Well, in either case, I think the present one ought to let the absent one know, before taking any action. But don't look so blue. You forget that we shall both be in our districts, at a safe distance from Ranjitgarh, for six months at least."
"And in the meantime she may marry some one else."
"Then we shan't have lost our friendship as well as her."
Charteris clapped him on the shoulder with a laugh. "I believe you, my boy! You don't know what a bore it has been this last fortnight, remembering what was between us whenever I wanted to tell you anything. Done with you, then, subject to necessary modifications to be agreed upon from time to time by mutual consent, and to the approval of the lady."
"But you wouldn't tell her?" cried Gerrard, aghast.
"Wouldn't I, just? Why, how is she to keep our joint memory green against the assaults of eligible subcommissioners and fat Commissariat colonels, unless she has this to remember us by? Hang suffering in silence! Let her know what fine fellows she has got waiting on her nod."
"Well, you can tell her," unwillingly.
"Not I. Be carried away into proposing again, and lose my turn? no, thank you. We will tell her together, my young friend, and keep a jolly keen eye on each other the whole time. And we'll do it at the ball. Come, this is something like life!"