If they chance to have been in India some twenty or thirty years ago, they will tell you why the Mutiny took place, and how the change of Government works; and they can put their fingers on all the sore places of the Empire, beginning with the distribution of patronage and ending with the deficiency of revenue, as aptly as if they were on the spot and had the confidence of the ruling officials. But in spite of these little foibles they are amusing companions as a rule, if shallow and radically ill-informed; and as it is for their own interest to be good company, they have cultivated the art of conversation to the highest pitch of which they are capable, and can entertain if not instruct. When they aim at instruction indeed, they are pretty sure to miss the mark; and the social nomad who lays down the law on foreign statesmen and politics, and who speaks from personal knowledge, is just the one authority not to be accepted. Always living in public, yet having to fight, each for his own hand, the manners of social nomads in _pensions_ are generally a strange mixture of suavity and selfishness; and the small intrigues and crafty stratagems going on among them for the possession of the favourite seat in the drawing-room, the special attention of the head-waiter at table, the earliest attendance of the housemaid in the morning, is in strange contrast with the ready smiles, the personal flatteries, the affectation of sympathetic interest kept for show. But every social nomad knows how to appraise this show at its just value, and can weigh it in the balance to a grain. He does not much prize it; for he knows one characteristic of these communities to be that everybody speaks against everybody else, and that all concur in speaking against the management. Still, life seems to go easily enough among them. They are all well-dressed and for the most part have their tempers under control. Some of the women play well, and some sing prettily. There are always to be found a sufficient number of the middle-aged of either sex to make up a whist-table, where the game is sound and sometimes brilliant; and there are sure to be men who play billiards creditably and with a crisp, clean stroke worth looking at. And there are very often lively women who make amusement for the rest. But these are smartly handled behind backs, though they are petted in public and undeniably useful to the society at large.