isions in
dazzling complexions and long kid gloves, rattling up in third-class
ticca-gharries, with a wisp of fodder clinging to their skirts. It was
less interesting still when they belonged to the other class, the shabby
ladies, nearly always in black, with husbands in the Small Cause Court,
or sons before the police magistrate, who came to get it, if possible,
"kept out of the paper." Successful or not these always wept on their
way out, and nothing could be more depressing. The only gleam of
entertainment to be got out of a lady visitor to the manager-sahib
occurred when the female form enshrined the majestic personality of a
boarding-house madam, whose asylum for respectable young men in leading
Calcutta firms had been maliciously traduced in the local columns of the
Chronicle--a lady who had never known what a bailiff looked like in the
lifetime of her first husband, or her second either. Then at the sound
of a pudgy blow upon a table, or high abusive accents in the rapid
elaborate cadences of the domiciled East Indian tongue, Hari Babu would
glance at Gobind Babu with a careful smile, for the manager-sahib who
dispensed so much galli* was now receiving the same, and defenceless.

* Abuse.

The manager sat at his desk when Hilda went in. He did not rise--he was
one of those highly sagacious little Scotchmen that Dundee exports in
such large numbers to fill small posts in the East, and she had come
on business. He gave her a nod, however, and an affectionate smile, and
indicated with his blue pencil a chair on the other side of the table.
He had once made three hundred rupees in tea shares, and that gave him
the air of a capitalist and speculator gamely shrewd. Tapping the table
with his blue pencil he asked Miss Howe how the world was using HER.

"Let me see," said Hilda, a trifle absent-mindedly, "were you here last
cold weather--I rather imagine you were, weren't you?"

"I was; I had the pleasure of--"

"To be sure. You got the place in December, when that poor fellow Baker
died. Baker was a country-bred I know, but he always kept his
contracts, while you got your po-lish in Glesca, and your name is
Macphairson--isn't it?"

"I was never in Glasgow in my life, and my name is Macandrew," said the
manager, putting with some aggressiveness a paper-weight on a pile of
bills.

"Never mind," said Hilda, again wrapped in thought, "don't
apologise--it's near enough. Well, Mr. Macandrew,"--her tone came t