“But, dear Mrs. Krauss, we cannot allow you to appropriate Miss Leigh altogether.  I hope you will spare her to me now and then.  Perhaps Miss Leigh could come with me to the Gymkhana dance next week?”

“I should like it very much indeed,” said Sophy, glancing interrogatively at her aunt.

“Well, if I cannot take her myself, I shall be glad if you will chaperon Sophy.  She has not had any amusement yet and one is young but once!  And now we must go; no thank you, we won’t wait for tea.  I intend to rush the child round the lakes—­she has not seen them—­and then do some shopping in the bazaar.”

After the departure of her visitors, Mrs. Gregory stood in the veranda and watched them as they sped away together—­the dark faded beauty, the pretty, fresh girl—­and said to herself: 

“I wonder!”

CHAPTER XV

THE CHUMMERY

The chummery to which Douglas Shafto had been introduced was a rambling old bungalow, and the edge of the Cantonment, sufficiently close to offices and work.  Although by no means modern, it boasted both electric light and fans, and the rent was fairly moderate; the landlord, Ah Kin, a Chinaman, called for it punctually on the first of every month, but closed his slits of eyes to various necessary repairs.

Among the three chums already established was Roscoe, a dark, well-set up man of five or six and thirty, with a clean-shaven, eager face, artistic hands, and a pair of clever eyes.  Roscoe had been in turn a junior master, a journalist and actor.  Dissatisfied and unsatisfactory in these situations, his friends had found him an opening where he would be at too great a distance to trouble them—­in short, a billet in a Burma oil company in Rangoon.  Amazing to relate, the post suited him and the rolling stone came to a standstill; well educated and intellectual, endowed with a curious eye and a critical mind, he was anxious to see, mark and learn the life of his present surroundings.  Out of business hours, Roscoe devoted himself to this task with such whole-souled enthusiasm, that at times he actually imagined that he had his finger upon the pulse of this strange, new world.  The oldest and least prosperous of the fraternity, his companions liked him and spoke of Roscoe as “a queer fish, but a rare good sort.”

Patrick Ormond FitzGerald, police officer, a genial native of County Cork, was about thirty years of age, handsome, generous and hot-headed, who enjoyed every kind of scrap and sport—­including chasing dacoits and smugglers.  He diffused an atmosphere of good humour and confidence, was universally popular and invariably in debt.  Chum number three, James MacNab, hailed from “Bonnie Scotland”—­a spare, sandy, canny individual, who, far from being in debt, was carefully amassing large savings.  He had a pretty fiancee in Crieff, who sent him weekly budgets and the Scotsman.  He owned a sound, steady ambition, and seldom made an unconsidered remark.  “Mac” was an employe in the Irrawaddy Flotilla Company, where he was rapidly rising, so to speak, to the surface.