“Because half a dozen grasshoppers under a fern make the field ring with their importunate chink while thousands of great cattle, reposed beneath the shadow of the British oak, chew the cud and are silent, pray do not imagine that those who make the noise are the only inhabitants of the field—that, of course, they are many in number—or that, after all, they are other than the little, shrivelled, meagre, hopping, though loud and troublesome insects of the hour.”—_Burke_: “Reflections on the Revolution in France.” They were sitting in the verandah of “the splendid palace of an Indian Pro-Consul,” surrounded by all the glory and mystery of the immemorial East. In plain English it was a one-storied, ten-roomed, whitewashed mud-roofed bungalow, set in a dry garden of dusty tamarisk trees and divided from the road by a low mud wall. The green parrots screamed overhead as they flew in battalions to the river for their morning drink. Beyond the wall, clouds of fine dust showed where the cattle and goats of the city were passing afield to graze. The remorseless white light of the winter sunshine of Northern India lay upon everything and improved nothing, from the whining Persian-wheel by the lawn-tennis court to the long perspective of level road and the blue, domed tombs of Mahommedan saints just visible above the trees. “A Happy New Year,” said Orde to his guest. “It’s the first you’ve ever spent out of England, isn’t it?” “Yes. ’Happy New Year,” said Pagett, smiling at the sunshine. “What a divine climate you have here! Just think of the brown cold fog hanging over London now!” And he rubbed his hands.