ow. 'Didn't come to stay for ever,"
said Scott, dropping one of Marryat's novels, and rising to his feet.
"Martyn, your sister's waiting for you."

A rough grey horse was backing and shifting at the edge of the verandah,
where the light of a kerosene lamp fell on a brown-calico habit and a
white face under a grey-felt hat.

"Right, O!" said Martyn. "I'm ready. Better come and dine with us, if
you've nothing to do, Scott. William, is there any dinner in the house?"

"I'll go home and see," was the rider's answer. "You can drive him
over--at eight, remember."

Scott moved leisurely to his room, and changed into the evening-dress of
the season and the country: spotless white linen from head to foot,
with a broad silk cummerbund. Dinner at the Martyns' was a decided
improvement on the goat-mutton, twiney-tough fowl, and tinned entrees of
the Club. But it was a great pity that Martyn could not afford to send
his sister to the hills for the hot weather. As an Acting District
Superintendent of Police, Martyn drew the magnificent pay of six hundred
depreciated silver rupees a month, and his little four-roomed bungalow
said just as much. There were the usual blue-and-white-striped jail-made
rugs on the uneven floor; the usual glass-studded Amritsar phulkaris
draped on nails driven into the flaking whitewash of the walls; the
usual half-dozen chairs that did not match, picked up at sales of dead
men's effects; and the usual streaks of black grease where the leather
punka-thong ran through the wall. It was as though everything had been
unpacked the night before to be repacked next morning. Not a door in the
house was true on its hinges. The little windows, fifteen feet up, were
darkened with wasp-nests, and lizards hunted flies between the beams of
the wood-ceiled roof. But all this was part of Scott's life. Thus did
people live who had such an income; and in a land where each man's pay,
age, and position are printed in a book, that all may read, it is hardly
worth while to play at pretence in word or deed. Scott counted eight
years' service in the Irrigation Department, and drew eight hundred
rupees a month, on the understanding that if he served the State
faithfully for another twenty-two years he could retire on a pension of
some four hundred rupees a month. His working-life, which had been spent
chiefly under canvas or in temporary shelters where a man could sleep,
eat, and write letters, was bound up with the opening and g