also occasionally mentioned in undertones as 'the
first Mrs. Innes.' All of which we know to be quite erroneous, like most
scandal.

Mrs. Mickie and Mrs. Gammidge, in retirement, are superintending the
education of their children in Bedford, where it is cheap and practical.
They converse when they meet about the iniquitous prices of dressmakers
and the degeneracy of the kind of cook obtainable in England at
eighteen pounds a year. Mrs. Gammidge has grown rather portly and
very ritualistic. They seldom speak of Simla, and when they do, if too
reminiscent a spark appears in Mrs. Mickie's eye, Mrs. Gammidge changes
the subject. Kitty Vesey still fills her dance cards at Viceregal
functions, though people do not quote her as they used to, and
subalterns imagine themselves vastly witty about her colour, which is
unimpaired. People often commend her, however, for her good nature to
debutantes, and it is admitted that she may still ride with credit in
'affinity stakes'--and occasionally win them.

4. The Pool in the Desert.

I knew Anna Chichele and Judy Harbottle so well, and they figured so
vividly at one time against the rather empty landscape of life in a
frontier station, that my affection for one of them used to seem little
more, or less, than a variant upon my affection for the other. That
recollection, however, bears examination badly; Judy was much the better
sort, and it is Judy's part in it that draws me into telling the story.
Conveying Judy is what I tremble at: her part was simple. Looking
back--and not so very far--her part has the relief of high comedy with
the proximity of tears; but looking closely, I find that it is mostly
Judy, and what she did is entirely second, in my untarnished picture, to
what she was. Still I do not think I can dissuade myself from putting it
down.

They would, of course, inevitably have found each other sooner or later,
Mrs. Harbottle and Mrs. Chichele, but it was I who actually introduced
them; my palmy veranda in Rawul Pindi; where the teacups used to
assemble, was the scene of it. I presided behind my samovar over
the early formalities that were almost at once to drop from their
friendship, like the sheath of some bursting flower. I deliberately
brought them together, so the birth was not accidental, and my interest
in it quite legitimately maternal. We always had tea in the veranda in
Rawul Pindi, the drawing-room was painted blue, blue for thirty feet up
to the whitew