Page:The Story of the Gadsbys - Kipling (1888).djvu/29

 —Curtiss would have to import his nymphs by train. Mrs. Cockley's the only woman in the Station. She won't leave Cockley, and he's doing his best to get her to go.

—Good, indeed! Here's Mrs. Cockley's health. To the only wife in the Station and a thundering brave woman!

(drinking).—A thundering brave woman!

—I suppose Gaddy will bring his wife here at the end of the cold weather. They are going to be married almost immediately, I believe.

—Gaddy may thank his luck that the Pink Hussars are all detachment and no head-quarters this hot weather, or he'd be torn from the arms of his love as sure as death. Have you ever noticed the thorough-minded way British Cavalry take to cholera? It's because they are so expensive. If the Pinks had stood fast here, they would have been out in camp a month ago. Yes, I should decidedly like to be Gaddy.

—He'll go Home after he's married, and send in his papers—see if he doesn't.

—Why shouldn't he? Hasn't he money? Would any one of us be here if we weren't paupers?

—Poor old pauper! What has become of the six hundred you rooked from our table last month?

—It took unto itself wings. I think an enterprising tradesman got some of it, and a shroff gobbled the rest—or else I spent it.

—Gaddy never had dealings with a money lender in his life.

—Virtuous Gaddy! If I had three thousand a month, paid from England, I don't think I'd borrow either.

(yawning).—Oh, it's a sweet life! I wonder whether matrimony would make it sweeter.

—Ask Cockley—with his wife dying by inches!

—Go home and get a fool of a girl to come out to—what is it Thackeray says?-"the splendid palace of an Indian pro-consul."