Mrs. Veale passed and repassed without speaking. She observed him without allowing him to perceive that she observed him. Indeed, he hardly noticed her, and he was startled by her voice when she said, as he bent over the fire, ’Charles Luxmore, what do y’ think of the Revel now? I’ve a-been there, and to my reckoning it were grand, but, Lord! you’ve been over the world, and seen so many fine things that our poor Revel is nought in your eyes, I reckon.’ ’Bah! poor stuff, indeed. You should see Bombay, or the bazaar at Candahar! Bratton Clovelly! Bah! Punjab, Cawbul, Delhi, Peshawur! Ghuznee! Hyderabad!’ The utterance of these names, which he knew would convey no idea whatever to the mind of Mrs. Veale, afforded him relief. It morally elevated him. It showed him that he knew more of the world than Mrs. Veale. ’You don’t happen to know Dost Mahommed?’ ’Oh, dear, no!’ ’Nor ever heard tell of him?’ ’No, Mr. Luxmore.’ ’He’s an Ameer.’ ’Is he now?’ ’I’ve fought him. Leastways his son, Akbar Khan.’ ’You wasn’t hard on him, I hope?’ ’No, I wasn’t that. I merely carried off the doors of his mosque.’ ’Did that hurt him much?’ ’His feelings, Mrs. Veale, awful.’ ’Lord bless me!’ exclaimed the woman, looking at him over her shoulder as she stirred a pot on the fire, with her queer blinking eyes studying his expression but expressing nothing themselves. ’I do wonder you be home from the Revel so early. A soldier like you, and a fine young chap, ought to have stayed and enjoyed yourself. The best of the fun, I’ve heard tell, is in the evening.’ ’How can I stay at the Revel when I haven’t a copper to spend there?’ asked Charles surlily. ’I don’t like to see a grand young fellow like you sitting at home, like an old man with the rheumatics. We will be friends, Charles. I will give you a crown to buy your good-will.’ She took the money from her pocket and handed it him. ’I thank you,’ he said grandly—she had called him a grand young man—’but I can’t go to the Revel now.’ Nevertheless he pocketed the crown. ’I’ve seen enough of it, and got sick of it. Wretched stalls where nothing is for sale worth buying, wretched shows where nothing is seen worth seeing. I came away because the Revel wearied me.’ ’You’ll find it dull here,’ said the housekeeper. ’We poor ignorant creatures think the Revel and all in it mighty fine things, because we know no better and haven’t seen the world. It seems to me, Mr. Luxmore, you’re in the wrong place, as the elephant said to the stickleback that had got into the ark.’ ’I should just about think I was,’ said Charles, kicking out with both his heels. Mrs. Veale was a plain, not to say unpleasant-looking woman, much older than himself; he would not have given her a thought had she not called him ’Mr. Luxmore,’ and so recognised that he was a superior being to the Dicks and Toms on the farm.