wilderness; I hasten to
add that it is a waste as highly cultivated as you like, producing many
things more admirable than Ingersoll Armour. Still he bloomed there
conspicuously alone. Perhaps there would have been nothing to tell if we
had not tried to gather him. That was wrong; Nature in Simla expects you
to be content with cocked hats.

There are artists almost everywhere and people who paint even in the
Himalayas, though Miss Harris and I in our superior way went yearly to
the Simla Fine Arts Exhibition chiefly to amuse ourselves by scoffing.
It was easy to say clever things about the poor little exhibits; and one
was grateful to the show on this account, for nothing is more depressing
east of Suez than the absence of provocation to say clever things. There
one afternoon in May as we marched about enjoying ourselves, we came
upon Ingersoll Armour, not in the flesh, but in half a dozen studies
hanging in the least conspicuous corner and quite the worst light in the
room.

'Eh, what?' said I, and Dora exclaimed:

'I SAY!'

'Sent out from home,' I said, ever the oracle.

'Not at all,' replied Dora. 'Look, they are Indian subjects. SIMLA
subjects,' she went on, with excitement.

I turned up the catalogue. 'Ninety-seven, "Kasumti Bazaar";
ninety-eight, "Clouds on the Chor"; ninety-nine, "The House of a
Friend"--Lord, what apricot blossoms! Yes, they're all Simla.'

'For goodness' sake,' said Dora, 'who painted them? You've got the
catalogue!'

'"I. Armour,"' I read.

'"I. Armour,"' she repeated, and we looked at each other, saying in
plain silence that to the small world of Simla I. Armour was unknown.

'Not on Government House list, I venture to believe,' said Dora. That
in itself may show to what depths we sink. Yet it was a trenchant and a
reasonable speculation.

'It may be a newcomer,' I suggested, but she shook her head. 'All
newcomers call upon us,' she said. 'There in the middle of the Mall we
escape none of them. He isn't a calling person.'

'Why do you say "he"? You are very confident with your pronouns. There's
a delicacy of feeling--'

'Which exactly does not suggest a women. We are undermined by delicacy
of feeling; we're not strong enough to express it with brushes. A man
can make it a quality, a decorative characteristic, and so we see it.
With a woman it's everything--all over the place--and of no effect. Oh,
I assure you, I. Armour is a man.'

'Who shall stand against you! Let him be