attention,
and the hills for a change when necessary, there is no reason why babies
out here should not do perfectly well till they are seven. It is the
growing and impressionable stage, and I'll allow that the moral example
of human nature in the East is not of the best. I say it, who have been
brought up entirely out here."

"You are a tremendous credit to your upbringing," put in Meredith.

"My people were very particular and I was never allowed an ayah to teach
me self-indulgence, nor to associate with the servants' children on the
estate; for what native children do not know of evil isn't worth
knowing."

The Subdivisional Officer's bungalow was a type usually to be found in
rural Districts, built of bricks and mortar, whitewashed, and roofed
with the thatching grass that grows on low-lying lands by the Ganges.
Earlier in Raymond Meredith's career, Panchpokhur had been one of his
own appointments, and every corner of the dwelling and its grounds was
familiar to him: the tall goldmohur trees beside the gate, the range of
out-offices and stabling, the high, flowering hedge of hibiscus, the
primitive well by the palm tree, with its screeching pulley. Gazing from
the verandah he could almost imagine himself a bachelor again in the
first flush of an opening career, keen and interested. The low verandah
was the same on which he was wont to sleep on hot summer nights, and
breakfast upon, at sunrise, in his pyjamas. The deep, thatched roof was
as cool and as picturesque as of yore, having been renewed many times in
the seven or eight years that were gone. The difference in his
surroundings lay in the greater cleanliness--which usually distinguished
the abode of a married man from that of a careless bachelor--and also in
the supplementary furniture which threw his old camp articles into the
shade. He was able to recognise the more durable of his past possessions
in various parts of the house where they appealed to him as old friends.
In those days how little had sufficed him!

All was now changed, for his life was dominated with the one idea of
making his home attractive and suitable for the treasure it held.

* * * * *

After Panchpokhur, he moved on with his tents and the paraphernalia of
camp life to parts thickly populated by Indians of all castes and
creeds, and was received with pomp and ceremony befitting the
representative of the Ruling Power. Addresses were read to him before a