“I think it was I who said it, Cornelius,” remarked his much better half, coldly.

“Yes, my dear Superiora, yes.  Now with your help I think we can do something, Professor.  Good.  This is providential.  We shall be able to embarrass them now!  Will you write me——­”

“You are going a little too fast, I think,” said the Professor.  “I am a ‘Pro-Native’ and a servant of the Pro-Native Government of India.  As such, I don’t think I can be of any service to twenty-one-day visitors who wish to ‘embarrass’ the best friends of my friends the Natives, even supposing I were the sort of gentle Judas you compliment me by imagining me.  I——­”

“You distinctly say you are Pro-Native and then——­”

“I repeat I am intensely Pro-Native, and so are the Viceroy, the Governors, the entire Civil Service, the Educational Service, the Forest Service, the P.W.D., the Medical Service, the Army, and every other Service and Department in India as well as every decent man in India.  We are all Pro-Native, and all doing our best in our respective spheres, in spite of a deal of ignorant and officious interference and attempted ‘embarrassment’ at the hands of the self-seeking, the foolish, the busy-body, the idle—­not to mention the vicious.  What a charming day it is.  I have so enjoyed the honour of meeting you.”

* * * * *

“Well, my Scroobious Bird!  And have they this day roasted in India such a Gosling as shall never be put out?” inquired the non-moral and unphilosophic Professor of Moral Philosophy, a little later.

“No, my Augustus,” was the reply.  “It’s a quacking little gosling, and won’t lead to any great commotion m the farm-yard.  Nasty little bird—­like a sat-bai or whatever they call those appalling things ‘seven-sister’ birds, aren’t they, that chatter and squeak all day.”

“Have a long drink and tell us all about it,” replied Mr. Augustus Clarence Percy Marmaduke Grobble.

“Oh, same old game on the same old stage.  Same old players.  Leading lady and gent changed only.  Huge great hideous bungalow, like a Goanese wedding-cake, in a vast garden of symmetrically arranged blue and red glazed ‘art’ flower-pots.  Lofty room decorated with ancestral portraits done by Mr. Guzzlebhoy Fustomji Paintwallah; green glass chandeliers and big blue and white tin balls; mauve carpet with purple azure roses; wall-paper, bright pink with red lilies and yellow cabbages; immense mouldy mirrors, and a tin alarm clock.  Big crowd of all the fly-blown rich knaves of the place who have got more than they want out of Government or else haven’t got enough.  Only novelty was a splendid Pathan chap, got-up in English except for the conical cap and puggri.  Extraordinarily like Ross-Ellison, except that he had long black Pathan hair on his shoulders.  Been to England; barrister probably, and seemed the most viciously seditious of the lot.  Silly ignorant Goslings in the middle