“Sure the young ladies isn’t in the house at all, your ladyship!” cried the pursuing voice of Mary Ann Whooly, faithful, even at this supreme crisis, to a lost cause.

Lady Purcell heard her not.  She was aware only of her daughter Muriel, attired like a scarecrow in a cold climate, and of the attendant fact that the arm of the Local Government Board Inspector was encircling Muriel’s waist, as far as circumstances and a brown woollen shawl would permit.  Nora, leaning half-way out of the window, was calling at the top of her voice for Sir Thomas’s terrier; Sir Thomas was very loudly saying nothing in particular, much as an angry elderly dog barks into the night.  Lady Purcell wildly concluded that the party was rehearsing a charade—­the last scene of a very vulgar charade.

“Muriel!” she exclaimed, “what have you got on you?  And who—­” She paused and stared at the Inspector.  “Good gracious!” she cried, “why, it’s Aubrey Hamilton!”

THE BAGMAN’S PONY

When the regiment was at Delhi, a T.G. was sent to us from the 105th Lancers, a bagman, as they call that sort of globe-trotting fellow that knocks about from one place to another, and takes all the fun he can out of it at other people’s expense.  Scott in the 105th gave this bagman a letter of introduction to me, told me that he was bringing down a horse to run at the Delhi races; so, as a matter of course, I asked him to stop with me for the week.  It was a regular understood thing in India then, this passing on the T.G. from one place to another; sometimes he was all right, and sometimes he was a good deal the reverse—­in any case, you were bound to be hospitable, and afterwards you could, if you liked, tell the man that sent him that you didn’t want any more from him.

The bagman arrived in due course, with a rum-looking roan horse, called the “Doctor”; a very good horse, too, but not quite so good as the bagman gave out that he was.  He brought along his own grass-cutter with him, as one generally does in India, and the grass-cutter’s pony, a sort of animal people get because he can carry two or three more of these beastly clods of grass they dig up for horses than a man can, and without much regard to other qualities.  The bagman seemed a decentish sort of chap in his way, but, my word! he did put his foot in it the first night at mess; by George, he did!  There was somehow an idea that he belonged to a wine merchant business in England, and the Colonel thought we’d better open our best cellar for the occasion, and so we did; even got out the old Madeira, and told the usual story about the number of times it had been round the Cape.  The bagman took everything that came his way, and held his tongue about it, which was rather damping.  At last, when it came to dessert and the Madeira, Carew, one of our fellows, couldn’t stand it any longer—­after all, it is aggravating if a man won’t praise your best wine, no matter how little you care about his opinion, and the bagman was supposed to be a connoisseur.