Page:Quartette - Kipling (1885).djvu/119

 I've improved his riding. He used to turn pea-green when that antiquarian old pony of his shook her ears, but now he trots beautifully, rising and falling as fast as my sewing machine. (Imitates him with her hands before her.)

—I suspect he will make you as much of an archæologist as you will make him a horseman, or I shall make him a whist-player; but I must not waste a whole morning talking to a saucy puss who pretends she cannot recognise sterling merit when she sees it. I must be off; there's an awful file of cases to be got through.

—You are going to cutcherry church?

—Cutcherry church! What do you mean?

—I looked in the other day and saw you, with your legs up, fast asleep; while the munshi was chaunting psalms in Hindustáni though his nose, exactly like church on a hot Sunday afternoon!

(indignantly).—I wasn't asleep! I was listening to cases, with my eyes closed, it is true; but I follow the sense better when my eyes are closed. I never went to sleep while listening to a case.

—What, never?

—My dear child, if you imagine I am going to be idiot enough to reply, "Well, hardly ever!" you are very much mistaken. What I mean to say is, you may accuse us of a good many things, but nobody could say of the Indian Civilian that he went to sleep over his work.

—Well, Nubbee Baksh, what is it?

—Smallweed Sáhib says, what we are to do with the prisoner I brought in last night—the English loafer?

—Tell Mr. Smallweed I'll see about it and send him instructions. (Exit Nubbee Baksh.) By Jove, Edith, I quite forgot our prisoner! An English loafer, it seems, came drunk into the neighbouring village, demanded ghee and dál from the village bunnia, the grocer and provision-dealer, you know, and when he was refused, thrashed the bunnia within an inch of his life, and was arrested by Nubbee Baksh, after having knocked down four constables! And, as in the Mofussil I have no jurisdiction over Europeans, we shall have to drag the scoundrel about in camp with us till we can send him off under proper guard to Calcutta.

—How very dreadful!