"She has the sweetest frock you ever saw," said Mrs. Macdonald, turning to a pleasanter aspect of the subject. "I must say my sister-in-law took great pains with her outfit, and she certainly has excellent taste."
"Didn't you ever feel nervous at first," Elma asked, "when you went out in a jampan on a dark night down a very steep road?"
Mrs. Thompson laughed. "I can't say I remember it," she said. "I never fancied myself going over the kudd—the 'precipice' as you call it. I suppose I should have made my husband walk by the side of the jampan if I had been afraid."
Then she got up to go, and Mrs. Macdonald went out with her and stood talking for a minute in the long corridor outside her rooms.
"She is a very lovely creature," said Mrs. Thompson pleasantly. "I should think she is quite the prettiest girl in Simla this year."
"I think she is," the mother agreed; "but I am afraid she will be very difficult to manage. She is only just out of the schoolroom, you know, and girls are so unpractical. She doesn't care to talk to any one but the subalterns and boys of her own age—and it is so important she should settle this year. You know we retire next year."
"It is early days yet," said the other cheerfully.
She had come out to India herself as the bride of a very rising young civilian, and she knew nothing of the campaign of the mothers at Simla.
Elma indeed looked a lovely creature when she came out of her room an hour or two later to show herself to her mother before she stepped into the hated jampan. Her dress was a delicate creation of white lace and chiffon, with illusive shimmerings of silver in its folds that came and went with every one of her graceful movements. She was a tall and slender girl, with a beautiful long white throat, smooth and round, that took on entrancing curves of pride and gentleness, of humility and nobleness. She had splendid rippling hair of a deep bronze, that had been red a few years earlier; and dark blue dreamy eyes under broad dark eyebrows; a long sweep of cool fair cheek, and a rather wide mouth with a little tender, pathetic droop at the corners.
"That frock certainly becomes you to perfection," said the mother. "I hope you will enjoy yourself; and do try not to let the boys monopolise you this evening. It is not like a dance, you know, and really, it is not good form to snub all the older men who try to talk to you."