Then came a honeymoon at Arundel, and the Mamma wept copiously before she allowed her one daughter to sail away to India under the care of Georgie Porgie the Bridegroom.  Beyond any question, Georgie Porgie was immensely fond of his wife, and she was devoted to him as the best and greatest man in the world.  When he reported himself at Bombay he felt justified in demanding a good station for his wife’s sake; and, because he had made a little mark in Burma and was beginning to be appreciated, they allowed him nearly all that he asked for, and posted him to a station which we will call Sutrain.  It stood upon several hills, and was styled officially a ‘Sanitarium,’ for the good reason that the drainage was utterly neglected.  Here Georgie Porgie settled down, and found married life come very naturally to him.  He did not rave, as do many bridegrooms, over the strangeness and delight of seeing his own true love sitting down to breakfast with him every morning ’as though it were the most natural thing in the world.’

‘He had been there before,’ as the Americans say, and, checking the merits of his own present Grace by those of Georgina, he was more and more inclined to think that he had done well.

But there was no peace or comfort across the Bay of Bengal, under the teak-trees where Georgina lived with her father, waiting for Georgie Porgie to return.  The headman was old, and remembered the war of ’51.  He had been to Rangoon, and knew something of the ways of the Kullahs.  Sitting in front of his door in the evenings, he taught Georgina a dry philosophy which did not console her in the least.

The trouble was that she loved Georgie Porgie just as much as the French girl in the English History books loved the priest whose head was broken by the king’s bullies.  One day she disappeared from the village with all the rupees that Georgie Porgie had given her, and a very small smattering of English—­also gained from Georgie Porgie.

The headman was angry at first, but lit a fresh cheroot and said something uncomplimentary about the sex in general.  Georgina had started on a search for Georgie Porgie, who might be in Rangoon, or across the Black Water, or dead, for aught that she knew.  Chance favoured her.  An old Sikh policeman told her that Georgie Porgie had crossed the Black Water.  She took a steerage-passage from Rangoon and went to Calcutta; keeping the secret of her search to herself.

In India every trace of her was lost for six weeks, and no one knows what trouble of heart she must have undergone.

She reappeared, four hundred miles north of Calcutta, steadily heading northwards, very worn and haggard, but very fixed in her determination to find Georgie Porgie.  She could not understand the language of the people; but India is infinitely charitable, and the women-folk along the Grand Trunk gave her food.  Something made her believe that Georgie Porgie was to be found at the end of that pitiless