Personally he’d as soon go about with his wife’s fat French poodle as with Augustus, but so long as either amused her—­let the queer things flourish.

Among the nasty-minded old women who “talked” was the Mad Hatter.

“Shameful thing the way that Dearman woman throws dust in her husband’s eyes!” said he, while sipping his third Elsie May at the club bar.  “He should divorce her.  I would, to-morrow, if I were burdened with her.”

A knee took him in the small of the back with unnecessary violence and he spun round to demand instant apology from the clumsy....

He found himself face to face with one John Robin Ross-Ellison newly come to Gungapur, a gentleman of independent means but supposed to be connected with the Political Department or the Secret Service or something, who stared him in the eyes without speaking while he poised a long drink as though wondering whether it were worth while wasting good liquor on the face of such a thing as the Hatter.

“You’ll come with me and clear the dust from Dearman’s eyes at once,” said he at last.  “Made your will all right?”

The Hatter publicly apologised, then and there, and explained that he had, for once in his life, taken a third drink and didn’t know what he was saying.

“If your third drink brings out the real man, I should recommend you to stick to two, Bonnett,” said the young man, and went away to cogitate.

Should he speak to Dearman?  No.  He didn’t want to see so good a chap hanged for a thing like the Bonnett.  Should he go and slap Augustus Grobble hard and make him leave the station somehow?  No.  Sure to be a scandal.  You can no more stop a scandal than a locust-cloud or a fog.  The best way to increase it is to notice it.  What a horrid thing is a scandal-monger—­exhaling poison.  It publishes the fact that it is poisonous, of course—­but the gas is not enjoyable.

Well, God help anybody Dearman might happen to hear on the subject!  Happily Mr. (or Colonel) Dearman heard nothing, for he was a quiet, slow, jolly, red-haired man, and the wrath of a slow, quiet, red-haired man, once roused, is apt to be a rather dangerous thing.  Also Mr. Dearman was singularly elephantine in the blundering crushing directness of his methods, and his idea of enough might well seem more than a feast to some.

And Mr. Dearman suffered Augustus gladly, usually finding him present at tea, frequently at dinner, and invariably in attendance at dances and functions.

Augustus was happy and Good—­for Augustus.  He dallied, he adored, he basked.  For a time he felt how much better, finer, more enjoyable, more beautiful, was this life of innocent communion with a pure soul—­pure, if just a little insipid, after the real spankers he had hitherto affected.

He was being saved from himself, reformed, helped, and all the rest of it.  And when privileged to bring her pen, her fan, her book, her cushion, he always kissed the object with an appearance of wishing to be unseen in the act.  It was a splendid change from the Lurid Life and the mean adventure.  Piquant.