“Well, I think that to go is the best thing the Commissioner can do. It will give Mab a little peace.”
“Yes, I shouldn’t say she looked exactly festive.”
“How could she? She feels that she has cut herself off from us, for of course we can’t discuss things before her as we used to do, and I don’t think she finds that he makes up for it. I have great hopes.”
“Now, no coming between them!” said Dick warningly, and Georgia laughed.
“I trust it won’t be necessary,” she said.
A week later she happened to be again sitting alone in the drawing-room, busy with the fine white work on which she expended so many hours and such loving care at this time, when Dick came in. To her astonishment, he was in uniform, and laid his sword upon the table by the door as he entered.
“Why, Dick, you are not going to Nalapur with the Commissioner after all?” she cried.
“Burgrave can’t go, and I have to hold the durbar instead.”
“But how—what——?”
“It seems that he had a fearful blow-up with Tighe this morning, after taking it for granted all along that he would be allowed to leave off his splints and go. Tighe absolutely howled at the idea, told him that in moving from this house to his own he had jarred the knee so badly as to throw himself back for a week, and that the splints must stay on for some time yet. Of course he can’t ride in them, and to take him through the mountains in a doolie would be madness.”