“You come at the right moment, Frank,” she said, after they had chatted for some time.  “We were lamenting just now that we had received this morning a note from a gentleman who was coming to dine with us today, saying that he could not come; but now I regard it as most fortunate, for of course we want you to come to us at once.  I suppose you have not made any engagements yet.  We shall be sixteen with you, and I think they are all nice people.”

“I shall be very happy to come,” he said.  “I have certainly no engagements.  I looked in at the club last night.  It was my first appearance there, for my name only came up for election four months ago, and I should have felt very uncomfortable if I had not happened to meet two or three old friends.  One of them asked me to dinner for tomorrow.  For today I am altogether free.”

In the course of the evening Major Mallett received three or four invitations to dances and balls, and, being thus started in society, was soon out every evening.  For the first week he enjoyed the novelty of the scene, but very speedily tired of it.  At dinners the ladies he took down always wanted him to talk about India; but even this was, in his opinion, preferable to the crush and heat of the dances.

“How men can go on with such a life as this,” he said to a friend at the club, “beats me altogether, Colonel.  Two or three times in the year one might like to go out to these crowded balls, just to see the dresses and the girls, but to go out night after night is to my mind worse than hunting the rebels through the jungle.  It is just as hot and not a hundredth part so exciting.  I have only had three weeks of it, and I am positively sick of it already.”

“Then why on earth do you accept, Mallett?  I took good care not to get into it.  What can a man want better than this?  A well-cooked dinner, eaten with a chum, and then a quiet rubber; and perhaps once a fortnight or so I go out to a dinner party, which I like well enough as a change.  I always get plenty of shooting in winter, and am generally away for three months, but I am always heartily glad to get back again.”

“I am afraid I should get as tired of the club as I am of society, Colonel.”

“You have plenty of time, lad.  I am twenty years your senior.  Well, there is plenty before you besides society and club life.  Of course, you will marry and settle down, and become a county magistrate and all that sort of thing.  Thank goodness, what money came to me came in the shape of consols, and not in that of land.  A country life would be exile to me; but, you see, you have left the army much younger than I did.  I suppose you are not thirty yet?  The Crimea and India ran you fast up the tree.”

“No, I am only twenty-eight.  You know I was only a brevet Major, and had two more steps to get before I had a regimental majority.”

“That makes all the difference, Mallett; and it is absurd, a young fellow of your age crying out against society.”