All too soon, as it seemed to Penelope, Colin started in the train of Saadullah Kermani, and life at Alibad resumed its ordinary course, sadly flat, stale, and unprofitable in the estimation of one at least of the inhabitants. Penelope’s occupation was gone. She had joyfully resigned her interest in Ferrers, she could do nothing for Colin but pray for him, and she missed daily, almost hourly, the interest which Major Keeling had been wont to bring into her life. He never tried to see her alone now--in fact, his visits to the fort had ceased, and all her information as to the affairs of the border was derived from the stray pieces of news extorted from Sir Dugald by Lady Haigh, who was bent on educating him up to the belief that she and Penelope took an intelligent interest in public affairs. Not that these were exciting at this time. The young officer whose services Major Keeling had requisitioned was peremptorily restored to his original regiment, much against his will, and the usual heated correspondence followed. The border was quiet--in the case of Nalapur much too quiet, Major Keeling considered, and his demand for two additional European officers was finally refused by the authorities. The Haighs moved into their new house, which was at last pronounced safe, and Major Keeling took up his quarters in the imposing but gloomy building he had erected for himself. He abjured punkahs and every other kind of device for modifying the heat of the place, but he had laid aside his heroic views in planning the Haighs’ house. The lofty rooms were fitted with every appliance that had yet been discovered for making a Khemistan summer less intolerable, and there was a large _tai-khana_, or underground room, for refuge in the daytime, and a spacious roof for sleeping on at night. Lady Haigh and Penelope found plenty to do in making the bare rooms habitable with the small means at their disposal. Those were the days when anything of “country” make was regarded by the English in India as beyond the pale of toleration; but Lady Haigh, looking round upon the remnant of her belongings which had survived the journey up-country and the hands of the native servants, came to a heroic decision. It was all very well for people down at the coast, or generals’ wives and other _burra mems_, to have things out from home, but the subaltern’s wife must do her best with country goods; and she and Penelope worked wonders with native cottons and embroidered draperies, and the curious rugs which were brought by the caravans from Central Asia. Perhaps, as she herself confessed, she might not have been so courageous had it not been practically certain that none of the great ladies from the coast would ever see and criticise her arrangements, but for her part she did not think the native designs were so very hideous after all, or their colouring as barbaric as it appeared to most English people in those far-off days