"'It's just like the Old Testament; I shouldn't have been in the least surprised to meet Abraham and Jacob. It's the flatness of it, and the flocks and herds. There are women with pitchers on their heads, and a man was making scores of bricks with mud and straw--exactly like the pictures of the Children of Israel in "_Line upon Line_." And about a hundred horses and mules and donkeys and carts all stopped at midday, because it was so hot, and it was just what I'd always imagined Jacob doing. But inside cantonments it isn't a bit Biblical, but rather too civilized, etc.' ("Isn't Katie patient, listening to all this, auntie!") "'But you can't go far afield at Kohat. At Murree you could always get a three or four mile walk round Pindi Point, but here it's just to the Club and back. We go to the Central Godown and the Fancy Godown to shop. The Central is groceries, and the Fancy tooth-powder, Scrubb's Ammonia, etc. On Saturday they were afraid Captain Horrocks had smallpox, and so we all got vaccinated, but now that we've all taken beautifully it seems it isn't smallpox after all, and we've all got swelled arms, but Captain Horrocks is off the sick-list to-morrow. Colonel Wade is smaller than ever. Mrs. Wade is coming out by the "Rewa." Mrs. Beecher came to tea on Sunday----' ("Is that _our_ Mrs. Beecher, when Uncle Dick was at Chatham, auntie?")-- "'--and I forgot to say that Dot's parrots stood the journey awfully well, but they've got at the loquat trees and destroyed all the young shoots. Jim saw us safely in and is now off on his Indus trip. The 56th are going in March, and the 53rd come instead. I'm sure the new baby's a little darling; what are you going to call him?----' "And so on. I _do_ think she writes such good letters. Now let's have yours, Aunt Grace (and that really _will_ be the end, Katie)." And Lady Tasker's letters also were "put in." * * * * * It was a Sunday afternoon, at Cromwell Gardens. Stan was away with his film company for the week-end, and Dorothy had got Katie to stay with her during his absence and had proposed a call on Lady Tasker. They had brought the third Bit with them, and he now slept in one of the cots upstairs. Lady Tasker sat with her crochet at the great first-floor window that looked over its balcony out along the Brompton Road. On the left stretched the long and grey and red and niched and statued façade of the Victoria and Albert Museum, and the failing of the western flush was leaving the sky chill and sharp as steel and the wide traffic-polished road almost of the same colour. Inside the lofty room was the still glow of a perfect "toasting fire," and Lady Tasker had just asked Katie to be so good as to put more coal on before it sank too low.