Page:Under the Deodars - Kipling (1890).djvu/26

 luncher at the Club said spitefully: "Well, for a debilitated Ditcher, Yeere, you are going it. Hasn't any kind friend told you that she's the most dangerous woman in Simla?"

Yeere chuckled and passed out. When, oh when, would his new clothes be ready? He descended into the Mall to enquire; and Mrs. Hauksbee, coming over the Church Ridge in her 'rickshaw, looked down upon him approvingly. "He's learning to carry himself as if he were a man, instead of a piece of furniture, and—" she screwed up her eyes to see the better through the sunlight—"he is a man when he holds himself like that. O blessed Conceit, what should we be without you?"

With the new clothes came a new stock of self-confidence. Otis Yeere discovered that he could enter a room without breaking into a gentle perspiration, and could cross one, even to talk to Mrs. Hauksbee, as though rooms were meant to be crossed. He was, for the first time in nine years, proud of himself, and contented with his life, satisfied with his new clothes and rejoicing in the coveted friendship of Mrs. Hauksbee.

"Conceit is what the poor fellow wants," she said in confidence to Mrs. Mallowe. "I believe they must use Civilians to plough the fields with in Lower Bengal. You see I have to begin from the very beginning—haven't I? But you'll admit, won't you, dear, that he is immensely improved since I took him in hand. Only give me a little more time and he won't know himself."

Indeed, Yeere was rapidly beginning to forget what he had been. One of his own rank and file put the matter in a nutshell when he asked Yeere, in reference to nothing: "And who has been making you a Member of Council, lately? You carry the side of half-a-dozen of 'em."

"I—I'm awf'ly sorrow. I didn't mean it, you know," said Yeere apologetically.

"There'll be no holding you," continued the old stager grimly. "Climb down, Otis—climb down, or get all that