Page:Under the Deodars - Kipling (1890).djvu/68

 "Yes. Men are so unblushingly explicit if they are once allowed to talk, whereas women's confidences are full of reservation and fibs except"

"When they go mad and babble of the Unutterabilities after a week's acquaintance. Even then, they always paint themselves like Mrs. Gummidge—throwing cold water on him. Really, if you come to consider, we know a great deal more of men than of our own sex."

"And the extraordinary thing is that men will never believe it. They say we are trying to hide something."

"They are generally doing that on their own account—and very clumsily they hide. Alas! These chocolates pall upon me, and I haven't eaten more than a dozen. I think I shall go to sleep."

"Then you'll get fat, dear. If you took more exercise and a more intelligent interest in your neighbours you would"

"Be as universally loved as Mrs. Hauksbee. You're a darling in many ways and I like you—you are not a woman's woman—but why do you trouble yourself about mere human beings?"

"Because in the absence of angels, who I am sure would be horribly dull, men and women are the most fascinating things in the whole wide world, lazy one. I am interested in The Dowd—I am interested in The Dancing Master—I am interested in the Hawley Boy—and I am interested in you."

"Why couple me with the Hawley Boy? He is your property."

"Yes, and in his own guileless speech, I'm making a good thing out of him. When he is slightly more reformed, and has passed his Higher Standard, or whatever the authorities think fit to exact from him, I shall select a pretty little girl, the Holt girl I think, and"—here she waved her hands airily—whom Mrs. Hauksbee hath joined together let no man put asunder'. That's all."

"And when you have yoked May Holt with the most notorious detrimental in Simla and earned the undying