r Mr James hurried me away. But I am afraid--and I don't mind saying
so--of risking my last chance."

"Why your last? I wish I were coxcomb enough to be sure it was your
last, and that you would lose it."

"But even if she refused us both again, you can't go on persecuting a
girl who has said no to you three times."

"Why not? I shall go on asking her, if she says no a hundred times.
It's for her own good. No girl can really wish to be an old maid."

"Rather than marry you or me, perhaps."

"That shows how little she knows about it. But I give you my word she
ain't going to lose a good husband through any slackness of mine. You
won't find me wasting my opportunities as you have been doing."

"You pitch it pretty strong, Bob, but I believe I deserve it. Still, it
was not my fault that I could not settle things that last moment. Will
you do this for me, old boy? When we get back to Ranjitgarh, leave me
free to speak to her if I meet her first. If I find that it is you after
all, I promise you to make no attempt to persuade her, and if you meet
her first, of course you will find out for yourself."

"I believe you, my boy! And I only hope we may find out definitely.
This uncertainty plays the very mischief with a man when he has time to
think of it."

"My dear Bob, you don't mean to say you would rather know that all was up
with you than be able to go on hoping?"

"That I would! One can set one's teeth then, and grin and bear it, but
it's horrid disturbing, when you're trying to give your mind to regular
hard grinding work, for the thought of all that kind of thing to be
always intruding."

"If I didn't know you better than you know yourself, old boy, I should
say not only that you didn't care a pin for her, but that you couldn't.
Why, how could one carry on work at all without those very thoughts to
help one?"

"You're getting libellous, Hal. It's the uncertainty, not the thoughts,
that I find disturbing. If she would take me--bless her!--I'll lay you
anything you like she would be the Commander-in-Chief's lady in the
shortest time on record."

"Bob, it's precious hard on both of us. Whichever gets her, one of us
must be miserable."

"Let us make quite sure that she's happy, then. But it's a little late
to be talking like this, ain't it? What I find most cause to blame in
you, Hal, is a tendency to the sentimental. Turn your mind strictly to
business--namely, to receiving the orderly who i