I acquired
several pounds of your country coming up from Karachi. The air is
heavy with it, and for miles and miles along that distressful
eternity of rail there's no horizon to show where air and earth
separate."
"Yes. It isn't easy to see truly or far in India. But you had a decent
passage out, hadn't you?"
"Very good on the whole. Your Anglo-Indian may be
unsympathetic about one's political views; but he has reduced ship
life to a science."
"The Anglo-Indian is a political orphan, and if he's wise he won't
be in a hurry to be adopted by your party grandmothers. But how
were your companions, unsympathetic?"
"Well, there was a man called Dawlishe, a judge somewhere in
this country it seems, and a capital partner at whist by the way, and
when I wanted to talk to him about the progress of India in a
political sense (Orde hid a grin, which might or might not have
been sympathetic), the National Congress movement, and other
things in which, as a Member of Parliament, I'm of course
interested, he shifted the subject, and when I once cornered him,
he looked me calmly in the eye, and said: 'That's all Tommy rot.
Come and have a game at Bull.' You may laugh; but that isn't the
way to treat a great and important question; and, knowing who I
was. well. I thought it rather rude, don't you know; and yet
Dawlishe is a thoroughly good fellow.
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