'Drink your tea sharp!' said Nevill Lloyd with kindly familiarity, 'or you'll be getting ague. That's the worst of this beastly hole. It's always in extremes. Hot as blazes one moment, chill as charity----' He paused, for the iron hand beneath the parti-coloured velvet and brocade glove of India was resolved to have the girl in its grip at once, and a rattling thud, followed by a dull reverberation, rose from the near distance, making more than one in the chattering crowd pause also, until the sound came again, when the pause ended cheerfully in fresh chatter. 'It's a funeral,' explained Nevill Lloyd in answer to Lesley's look. 'The cemetery is close to the course, and enteric is shocking bad in barracks just now. Young Summers of ours is down with it, too. Awful ill, poor chap--couldn't be worse, I'm afraid.' A lady, passing, turned to listen, and, as she went on, said to her companion in a whisper, 'I do hope they won't have to put off the ball to-night--I've got such a jolly new dress from Paris for it.' Another vision came to Lesley, the vision of a dead lad and a Paris dress. 'Come for a turn--you're positively shivering,' said Captain Lloyd concernedly. They had barely escaped from the crush, however, when Sir George Arbuthnot appeared in the important fuss of new authority. A cipher telegram had come from England, he must return to Government House at once, if Captain Lloyd would kindly order the carriage. 'It's an orful nuisance, Miss Dwummond,' commented Jerry, tucking his hand into hers after his fashion with every one he liked, 'for dad and I was going to put five whole wupees on the blackboard thing for the Cup wace. And now he can't, of course. But I can. Can't I, dad?' he added, artfully appealing to a weak point in his parent, 'for you pwomised, didn't you?' Now the keeping of promises had always been a prop to Sir George's somewhat irresolute mind, so he promptly gave Jerry the five rupees, and, with a suggestion that Miss Drummond would help him to get the ticket, bustled off, leaving the latter no time for remonstrance. She stood looking resentfully at the pieces of silver which were to betray her principles, then said with chill dignity-- 'We had better take the ticket at once, I suppose, if it has got to be taken. Come, Gerald!' But Jerry's face was the face of Jerry when he forgot his hymn, and his hands, holding the five rupees, went behind his back to match his consciousness of error. 'I'm afwaid I don't know, please,' he began. 'Don't know what? Speak up, don't be stupid!' The flaming flag which always heralded the child's confessions of ignorance flew to his face; but, after his habit, he looked his inquisitor full in the eyes. 'What, please, a wankest outsider is.' Lesley hid her smile deftly; she had ample practice in the art with her pupil. 'And _I_ don't know which is the rankest outsider, so we must take it on chance,' she replied tartly.