puppy, and then consider,
you yourself, whether you are the sort of person to be unquestionably
happy there. If you see no reason to the contrary, pray do not go on.
There were times when Dora declared that she couldn't breathe for want
of an atmosphere, and times when I looked round and groaned at the
cheerful congratulatory aridity in every man's eye--men who had done
things at Oxford in my own year, and come out like me to be mummified
into a last state like this. Thank Heaven, there was never any cheerful
congratulation in my eye; one could always put there, when the thought
inspired it, a saving spark of rank ingratitude instead.

It was as if we had the most desirable things--roses, cool airs, far
snowy ranges--to build what we like with, and we built Simla--altitude,
7,000, population 2,500, headquarters of the Government of India during
the summer months. An ark it was, of course; an ark of refuge from the
horrible heat that surged below, and I wondered as I climbed the steeps
of Summer Hill in search of I. Armour's inaccessible address, whether he
was to be the dove bearing beautiful testimony of a world coming nearer.
I rejected the simile, however, as over-sanguine; we had been too long
abandoned on our Ararat.

Chapter 2.III.

A dog of no sort of caste stood in the veranda and barked at me
offensively. I picked up a stone, and he vanished like the dog of a
dream into the house. It was such a small house that it wasn't on the
municipal map at all: it looked as if someone had built it for amusement
with anything that was lying about. Nevertheless, it had a name, it
was called Amy Villa, freshly painted in white letters on a shiny
black board, and nailed against the nearest tree in the orthodox Simla
fashion. It looked as if the owner of the place had named it as a
duty towards his tenant, the board was so new, and in that case the
reflection presented itself that the tenant might have cooperated to
call it something else. It was disconcerting somehow to find that our
dove had perched, even temporarily, in Amy Villa. Nor was it soothing
to discover that the small white object stuck in the corner of the board
was Mr. Ingersoll Armour's card.

In Simla we do not stick our cards about in that way at the mercy of the
wind and the weather; we paint our names neatly under the names of our
houses with 'I.C.S.' for Indian Civil Service, or 'P.W.D.' for Public
Works Department, or whatever designation we are ent