“And no hope whatever of our regiment being ordered back to England! We shall get gray out here in this heathenish climate, while the fancy regiments play the heroes at balls in country towns at home. The good things of life are pretty unevenly distributed any how.” He replaced his cigar and clapped his hands sonorously. A light-footed native, clad in loose white trousers and white turban, and having his copper-colored waist naked, glided around an angle of the veranda and approached him with a salaam. “Sherbet,” said the major sententiously. The servant muttering, “Yes, Sahib,” glided away as he had come. The major let fall his paper and reclined his head upon a bamboo rest, continuing to smoke. He had arisen hours before, had taken his usual morning ride to the house of a friend, his nearest neighbor, three miles distant, and had returned to breakfast with his wife and family, who were now occupied in one of the four rooms of the dwelling. The major’s duties for the day were now to be suspended until sunset, the intervening hours being spent in smoking, reading, sleeping and partaking frequently of light and cooling refreshments. The sherbet was presently brought to the major in a crystal jug upon a salver. He laid down his cigar and sipped the beverage with an air of enjoyment, yet lazily, as he did everything. “I don’t see how I should get along without you, Karrah,” said the major. “And you know it too, you dog. I pay you big wages as it is, and now I want to know how much extra you will take, and forego your present practice of stealing. I think I’d better commute. Mrs. Archer says you are robbing us right and left. What do you say?” The native, a slim, lithe, sinewy fellow with oblong black eyes, full of slyness and wickedness, a mouth indicative of a cruel disposition, and with movements like a cat, grinned at the major’s speech, but did not deny the charge. He had formerly been George Wynde’s servant and nurse, then Sir Harold’s attendant, and was now Major Archer’s most valued servant. He had made himself necessary to the officer by his knowledge of all his master’s requirements, and his exact fulfillment of them; by his skill in concocting sherbets and other cooling drinks; by his apparent devotion, and in other ways. Being so highly valued, he had every opportunity, in that loosely ordered household, of robbing his employer, and he was maintaining a steady drain upon the major’s purse which that officer now purposed to abolish. “Come, you coppery rascal,” said the major good-humoredly, “what will you take to let the sugar and tea and coffee and the rest of the things alone, except when you find them on the table?” “Karrah no make bargain, Sahib,” said the native, rolling up his eyes. “Karrah do better as it is.”