Page:Quartette - Kipling (1885).djvu/22

 like the deep purple leaf of the heartsease. About her manner of speaking there was a delicious piquancy, and little flashes of humour illuminated her phrases, many of which seemed to me bewitchingly original. She made me think of a humming bird, so daintily did she alight on any subject, and so airily did she flit round the dull stream of the planter's talk.

"If all the women are like this," I had thought as I took my seat beside, her. "There never was a woman like this!" I said to myself an hour later, as she rose from the table, bidding us come to her room when we cared for coffee.

Conversation languished when Laura was gone, and it was with difficulty that I could fix my attention sufficiently to reply to my host's question as to my taste in cheroots. We spoke of the climate, the subject which in India takes the place of the eternal weather in England, of my journey, of books which he had never read, of plays which he had never seen, and it was plain that, as far as was possible, he tried to look at life through his young wife's eyes. "We are alone here," he said; "but not so lonely as you might think. My wife has her books and flowers, her child and her piano; she is fond of riding, and has got the best horse I could find for her. A woman can be contented and make herself happy with all those things, don't you think?" It struck me that his manner was more wistful than assertive, as though he sought rather to reassure himself than to inform me. "We will do what we can for you," he continued, more briskly, "though I am afraid at first you may find it all dull. If you care for sport you can have plenty of that. I am a busy man with lots of leisure, and you may generally reckon upon me."

"I don't care for sport in any form," I said. "My life hitherto has been chiefly spent among books at school and at College; and I am afraid you must count upon my being willing to share the dulness of life up-country rather than upon my being able to contribute anything towards its enlivenment."

He looked at me for a moment across the cloud of smoke which had arisen between us, in grave silence, and something in his expression provoked me. I thought I detected a shade of contempt, and was determined not to be despised for nothing, so I went on:-"I play the violin and sketch in water-colours; and it is because I care chiefly for these things, which my father considers unpractical, and almost unmanly, that he has sent me