They were now sitting in the garden, in undress, drinking tea, at half-past five. It was very strange, but Léonie at once filled the great house with a certain home-like feeling of comfort, because she liked comfort herself. At other times Van Oudijck would hurriedly swallow a cup of tea which Kario brought him in his bedroom: to-day this afternoon tea made a pleasant break in the day; cane chairs and long deck-chairs were placed outside, in front of the house; the tea-tray stood on a cane table; there were roasted bananas; and Léonie, in a red silk Japanese kimono, with her fair hair hanging loose, lay back in a cane chair playing with Doddie's cockatoo and feeding it with pastry. It was different at once, Van Oudijck thought: his wife, so sociable, charming, pretty, telling scraps of news about their friends in Batavia, the races at Buitenzorg, a ball at the Viceroy's, the Italian opera; the boys merry, healthy and jolly, however dirty they might make themselves in playing. He called them to him and romped with them and asked them about the grammar-school--they were both in the second class--and even Doddie and Theo seemed different to him: Doddie was now plucking roses from the potted trees, looking delightfully pretty and humming a tune; and Theo was communicative with mamma and even with him. A pleased expression played around Van Oudijck's moustache. His face was quite young still; he hardly looked forty-eight. He had a quick, bright glance, a way of looking up suddenly with an acute, penetrating air. He was rather heavy of build, with a tendency to become still heavier, but yet he had retained a soldierly briskness and he was indefatigable on his circuits: he was a first-rate horseman. Tall and powerfully built, content with his house and his family, he wore a pleasant air of robust virility, with a jovial laughing expression around his moustache. And, relaxing himself, stretched out at full length in his cane chair, he drank his cup of tea, and gave utterance to the thoughts which generally welled up in him at such moments of satisfaction. Yes, it was not a bad life in India, [3] when all was said, in the B.B. [4] At least it had always been good for him; but then he had been pretty lucky. Promotion nowadays was a desperate business: he knew any number of assistant-residents who were his contemporaries and who had no chance of becoming residents for years to come. And that certainly was a desperate position, to continue so long in a subordinate office, to be compelled at that age to hold one's self at the orders of a resident. He could never have stood it, at forty-eight! But to be a resident, to give orders on his own initiative, to rule as large and important a district as Labuwangi, with such extensive coffee-plantations, with such numbers of sugar-factories, with so many leased concessions: that was a delight, that was living, that was a life grander and more spacious than any other, a life with