"

"Entirely, Miss Hannay; I am a pretty good hand at talking, but at times
I have found it very hard work, I can assure you, especially when
you take down a stranger to the station, so that you have no mutual
acquaintance to pull to pieces."

The dinner was bright and pleasant, and when the evening was over Isobel
said to her uncle, "I think Captain Forster is very amusing, uncle."

"Yes," the Major agreed, "he is a good talker, a regular society man; he
is no great favorite of mine; I think he will be a little too much for
us in a small station like this."

"How do you mean too much, uncle?"

The Major hesitated.

"Well, he won't have much to do with his troop of horse, and time will
hang heavy on his hands."

"Well, there is shooting, uncle."

"Yes, there is shooting, but I don't think that is much in his line.
Tiffins and calls, and society generally occupy most of his time, I
fancy, and I think he is fonder of billiards and cards than is good for
him or others. Of course, being here by himself, as he is, we must do
our best to be civil to him, and that sort of thing, but if we were
at Cawnpore he is a man I should not care about being intimate in the
house."

"I understand, uncle; but certainly he is pleasant."

"Oh, yes, he is very pleasant," the Major said dryly, in a tone that
seemed to express that Forster's power of making himself pleasant was by
no means a recommendation in his eyes.

But Captain Forster had apparently no idea whatever that his society
could be anything but welcome, and called the next day after luncheon.

"I have been leaving my pasteboard at all the residents," he said; "not
a very large circle. Of course, I knew Mrs. Rintoul at Delhi, as well
as Mrs. Doolan. I did not know any of the others. They seem pleasant
people."

"They are very pleasant," Isobel said.

"I left one for a man named Bathurst. He was out. Is that the Bathurst,
Major Hannay, who was in a line regiment--I forget its number--and left
very suddenly in the middle of the fighting in the Punjaub?"

"Yes; I believe Bathurst was in the army about that time," the Major
said; "but I don't know anything about the circumstances of his
leaving."

Had Captain Forster known the Major better he would have been aware that
what he meant to say was that he did not wish to know, but he did not
detect the inflection of his voice, and went on--"They say he showed
the white feather. If it is the same man, I was at school w