"I need not ask if you are enjoying your tour," he said. "You are looking famously." "Oh yes, I think this primitive world quite charming, and the air is so bracing! You have no idea what a pedestrian I have become. When Mona and my husband go off on breakneck excursions, Evelyn and I walk for hours--the whole day long nearly." Mona looked up hastily. She had never heard of these wonderful walks; but her eyes met Evelyn's, and her question died on her lips. "And Sir Douglas?" asked Mr Dickinson. Lady Munro laughed, a low sweet laugh. "Oh, of course, he always grumbles; he says he has lived on roast leather and boiled flannel ever since we came. But he is enjoying himself immensely. It is a great thing for him to have Mona's company, as indeed it is for all of us. I am afraid she finds us dreadfully stupid. You have no idea what books she reads." "At the present moment," said Mona gravely, "I am reading _Moths_." Everybody laughed. "Then you are meditating a cutting critique," said her aunt. "I am reading the book simply and entirely for amusement," said Mona. "I am getting a little tired of ormolu and marqueterie, but one can't have everything one wants." "But you don't really care for Ouida?" said the Sahib seriously. Mona sighed. "If you force me to be critical," she said, "I do prefer sunlight, moonlight, or even glaring gaslight. Ouida takes one into a dark room, and, through a hole in the shutter, she flashes a brilliant gleam of light that never was on sea or land. But what then? She is a very clever woman, and she knows how to set about telling a story. One admires her power and _esprit_, one skips her vulgar descriptions, and one lets her morality alone." Lady Munro laughed rather uneasily. She would not have owned to any man that she read Ouida, and Mona puzzled her. "After all, the child has been so buried in her studies," she thought, "that she knows nothing of the world. She will learn not to say _risqué_ things to men, and, fortunately, it is only the Sahib." Sir Douglas returned, and the conversation resolved itself into a discussion of routes and steamers. "I will not sleep again at that horrid noisy Voss," he said. "We must lunch and change horses there, and get on to Eide the same night." "Can you be ready to start at eight?" said the Sahib to Lady Munro. "Oh dear, yes! I am up every morning hours before that." Sir Douglas laughed cynically. "Who is Mr Dickinson?" said Mona, when she and Evelyn had retired to their room. "Deputy-Commissioner of--I always forget the name of the place." "Never mind. Boggley Wallah will do equally well for me. And why do they call him Sahib? I thought everybody was a Sahib?" "His family call him that for a joke, and it has stuck somehow. It was because he was very young when he got some appointment or other." "He looks a mere boy now." "I think he is thirty-three."