ugh discipline.'

'He's a student. Not that it amounts to a defect, you know'--she was as
jealous already as if she possessed the things--'only a sign to read
by. I should be grateful for more signs. Why should a student come to
Simla?'

'To teach, perhaps,' I suggested. Naturally one sought only among
reasons of utility.

'It's the Kensington person who teaches. When they have worked in the
ateliers and learned as much as this they never do. They paint fans and
menu cards, and starve, but they don't teach.'

Sir William Lamb, Member of Council for the Department of Finance,
was borne by the stream to our sides. The simile will hardly stand
conscientious examination, for the stream was a thin one and did no more
than trickle past, while Sir William weighed fifteen stone, and was
so eminent that it could never inconvenience him at its deepest. Dora
detached her gaze from the pictures and turned her back upon them; I
saw the measure of precaution. It was unavailing, however. 'What have
we here?' said Sir William. Dora removed her person from his line of
vision, and he saw what we had there.

'The work of a friend of yours?' Sir William was spoken of as
a 'cautious' man. He had risen to his present distinction on
stepping-stones of mistakes he conspicuously had not made.

'No,' said Dora, 'we were wondering who the artist could be.'

Sir William looked at the studies, and had a happy thought. 'If you ask
me, I should say a child of ten,' he said. He was also known as a man of
humour.

'Miss Harris had just remarked a certain immaturity,' I ventured.

'Oh, well,' said Sir William, 'this isn't the Royal Academy, is it? I
always say it's very good of people to send their things here at all.
And some of them are not half bad--I should call this year's average
very high indeed.'

'Are you pleased with the picture that has taken your prize, Sir
William?' asked Dora.

'I have bought it.' Sir William's chest underwent before our eyes an
expansion of conscious virtue. Living is so expensive in Simla; the
purchase of a merely decorative object takes almost the proportion of an
act of religion, even by a Member of Council drawing four hundred pounds
a month.

'First-rate it is, first-rate. Have you seen it? "Our Camp in Tirah."
Natives cooking in the foreground, fellows standing about smoking, and
a whole pile of tinned stores dumped down in one corner, exactly as they
would be, don't you know! Oh, I think the Committ