Her lower lip quivered as she concluded, and her eyes darkened with unshed tears. This was more than Saint Antony could have withstood. Philip Gascoigne was amazed to hear himself saying—or surely a stranger spoke: "Why, Angel, of course I am delighted to see you. Your coming has taken me aback, that is all; and I am a hardened old bachelor, not at all accustomed to young ladies." "No, nor being turned out of your house into the wet jungle," she supplemented with a watery smile. "If I am not so old as you expected, you are much older than I dreamt of. I always seem to see you in my mind's eye with a fair pigtail, and frock just reaching to your ankles." "If you wish, I can return to both within the hour," she rejoined with a hysterical laugh. At this moment the ayah made her appearance round a corner, and said in her whining voice: "Gussal tiar, Miss Sahib." "It's my bath," she said. "I really must go and change. I feel such a grub ever since I left Bombay. _Au revoir_," and she sprang up, and left her guardian to his undisturbed reflections. CHAPTER XVIII DINNER FOR TWO WHILST the young lady was changing her dress Gascoigne had another interview with his bearer, ere retiring into the damp tent to remove his wet clothes. "Look here," he said, "you must do all you can to make the place nice for the Miss Sahib—tidy it up—and, I say, isn't there a lamp-shade?" Abdullah assented with solemn complacency. "There are no flowers, or dessert, but there's some chocolate—and see that the cook does not spare his stores, and has an eye to the ayah and coolies; they have all to be ready for an early start to-morrow." And having issued these orders, he departed to his damp quarters, where he experienced exasperating difficulties in finding his belongings, which had been hurled into the tent pell-mell. He had no looking-glass; he was actually obliged to do his tie at the back of his silver flask. How a woman upset a house! As Gascoigne searched wildly for a handkerchief, his thoughts were inhospitable—his mental expressions impassioned. Meanwhile the bearer, thus put on his mettle, bustled about with feverish activity; he, like all natives, thoroughly enjoyed a crisis, an unexpected situation, a novelty, a commotion. He was also full of resource, but here his resources were so limited he had nothing to draw upon save his master's wardrobe, and he put it under contribution without delay.