"
But not a soul thought of comparing the "bloody-minded
Simmons" to the squawking, gaping schoolgirl with which this
story opens.
The Enlightenments of Pagett, M.P.
"Because half a dozen grasshoppers under a fern make the field
ring with their importunate chink while thousands of great cattle,
reposed beneath the shadow of the British oak, chew the cud and
are silent, pray do not imagine that those who make the noise are
the only inhabitants of the field-that, of course, they are many in
number or that, after all, they are other than the little, shrivelled,
meagre, hopping, though loud and troublesome insects of the
hour."-Burke: "Reflections on the Revolution in France."
THEY were sitting in the veranda of "the splendid palace of an
Indian Pro-Consul"; surrounded by all the glory and mystery of the
immemorial East. In plain English it was a one-storied,
ten-roomed, whitewashed, mud-roofed bungalow, set in a dry
garden of dusty tamarisk trees and divided from the road by a low
mud wall. The green parrots screamed overhead as they flew in
battalions to the river for their morning drink. Beyond the wall,
clouds of fine dust showed where the cattle and goats of the city
were passing afield to graze. The remorseless white light of the
winter sunshine of Northern India lay upon everything and
improved nothing, from the whining Peisian-wheel by the
lawn-tennis court to the long perspective of level road and the
blue, domed tombs of Mohammedan saints just visible above the
trees.
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