II.

"LIFE IS REAL; LIFE IS EARN

EST."

"Oh, Georgie, I do so want a good, long talk."

It was the next morning, and Mabel had settled herself on the veranda with her work, a laudable pretence in which no one had ever seen her set a stitch. After Dick had ridden away, she yawned a good deal, and looked out more than once disconsolately over the desert in search of entertainment, which did not appear, for Georgia had her household duties to perform before she could devote herself to amusing her sister-in-law. Mabel had several distant glimpses of her laying down the law to submissive servants, and paying surprise visits in the compound, but at last she mounted the steps, threw aside her sun-hat, and, bringing out a workbasket, spread a little pile of delicate cambric upon the table before her. "Talk, then," she said, with a pin in her mouth.

"But are you sure we shan't be interrupted? Have you quite done?"

"I think we are safe. I have visited the cook-house and the dairy, interviewed the gardener, arranged about the horse's and cow's food as well as our own, and physicked all the invalids in the neighborhood. So begin, Mab." "Well, don't you want to know my real reasons for coming out?"

"I thought we heard them last night -such as they are."

"How nasty you are, Georgie! Didn't you guess that there were other reasons behind, reserved for your private ear, and not to be exposed to Dick's ribaldry? The truth is, I was hungerLIVING AGE. VOL. X. 525

ing and thirsting for reality, and that's why I came."

"My beloved Mab, is England a world of shadows?"

"It is exactly that to women in our class of life, at any rate-and I am sick of shadows. Our life has become so smooth, and polished, and refined, that it is not life at all. We are all Tomlinsons more or less-getting our emotions second-hand from books and plays. Some of us go into the slums or the hospitals in search of experiences (you'll say that that was what I tried to do), but even then we only see things, we don't feel them. I wanted to get to a place where things still happened, where there were real people and real passions."

"Do you know, Mab-Georgia fixed a critical eye on her “if you had been a little younger, I should have suspected you of a yearning to enter the Army Nursing Service. I can't tell you how many girls have lamented to me at different times the unreality of their lives, and proposed to set them right by means of that particular act of selfsacrifice. But as things are, I suppose, to use plain English, you were bored?"

"Bored to exasperation, then, you unsympathetic creature! But I am serious, Georgie. There's something you quoted in one of your letters from Kubbet-ul-Haj that expresses my meaning. It has haunted me ever since. It was something like, 'When the world grows too refined and too cultured, God sends great judgments to beat us back to the beginning of history again, to toils, and pain, and peril, and the old first heroic lessons-how to fight and how to endure.' It would be absurd for me, in England, to take to living in a slum, making my own things and teaching

"Georgie! as if I wanted to make a savage of myself, like the youth in 'Locksley Hall'! Surely life can be simple and primitive without being squalid?"

"You haven't asked my advice, and I don't know whether you want it, but it's dreadfully commonplace. Get married."

"You mean that I should know then what reality is?

What an indictment

to bring against Dick! What does he do to you, Georgie?"

Georgia smiled superior. "You don't expect me to begin to defend Dick to you?" she asked, then laughed aloud. "No, Mab, you needn't try to tease me about him at this hour of the day. But what I mean is that you get into the way of looking at things in quite a different light when you are married. You don't hold a brief for your own sex any longer, but for men as well. That makes the difference, I think. You are in the middle, instead of on one side, and that is at any rate a help towards seeing life whole."

"But do you always look at things now through Dick's spectacles? How painfully monotonous!"

"We don't always agree, of course. But we talk things over together, and generally one convinces the other. If not, we agree to differ."

Mabel shook her head. "Then I'm perfectly certain that you and Dick have never differed on a really vital matter," she said. "In that case I know quite well that neither of you would ever convince the other, and you could not conscientiously agree to differ, so what is to happen?"

Georgia did not seem to hear her. She rose and went into the drawing-room, and unlocking a little carved cabinet that stood on her writing-table took something out of a secret drawer. "Look at this, Mab," she said, handing Mabel a piece of paper. It was a photograph, obviously the work of an amateur, of a little grave surrounded by lofty trees.

"Oh, Georgie!" the tears sprang to Mabel's eyes-"this is baby's grave?"

Georgia nodded. "Dick doesn't know that I have it," she said, speaking quickly. "Mr. Anstruther took the photograph for me, and I had one framed, and it always hung in my room. I used to sit and look at it when Dick was out. Sometimes I cried a little, of course, but I never thought he would notice. But he took it into his head that I was fretting, and when we left Iskandarbagh he gave the servants a hint to lose the picture in moving. Wasn't it just like him, dear fellow? but he never bargained for the servants' letting out the truth to me. I had this one as well, but when I saw how Dick felt about it, I took care to keep it hidden away, and he thinks his plan has succeeded, and that I have forgotten. It makes him so much happier."

"I see," said Mabel, in a low voice. "You wouldn't have done that once, Georgie. I see the difference. But surely there is a name on the stone?" she was examining the photograph closely. "She was baptized, then? never heard-"

I

"Yes, Dick baptized her; there was no one else-Georgia Mabel, he would have it so. Oh, Mab, it was awful that time. We were the only English people at Iskandarbagh just then, and the tribes were out on the frontier. Miss Jenkins, the Bab-us-Sahel missionary, was coming to me. Since I met her first she has been home to take the medical course, and is fully qualified.

She

Well, she could not get to me, and I couldn't get to Khemistan, and I had to stay where I was and be doctor and patient both. Of course I had my dear good Rahah, and Dick was as gentle as any woman, but oh, it was terrible! But I shouldn't have minded afterwards, if only baby had lived. was such a darling, Mab, with fair hair and dark eyes like yours. Dick tried to cheer me up-joked about her being so small and weak, but she died in my arms a few minutes after she was baptized. Miss Jenkins got through to us the next day, at the risk of her life, but she was only in time for the-the funeral in the Residency garden." "And you lived through that? Georgie, it would have killed me." "Oh no; there was Dick, you know. Poor dear Dick! he was disappointed about baby, of course, but a man doesn't feel that sort of thing as a woman does. Besides, he was so glad I was left that he really could not think of anything else."

"And you, Georgie?"

Oh,

"I can't talk of it, Mab, even to you -how I longed to die. But he never knew it. And when I was better I saw how wicked I had been. I would have lost anything rather than leave him alone."

"Well," said Mabel, trying to speak lightly, "you have made acquaintance with realities, Georgie, at any rate, but I don't know that I am very keen on following in your footsteps. I believe you have made me afraid of taking your advice. Marriage seems to involve experiences out here which one doesn't get at home."

"It does," agreed Georgia, “and I suppose they would be too much for some women. But when you love the country and the people as I do and love your husband, of course; you would scarcely come out here with him if you didn't-I think the life brings you nearer to one another than anything else

could. It is such an absolute solitude à deux, you see, and you are so completely shut up to each other, that you seem really to become one, not just figuratively. It's rather a terrible experiment to make, as you say, but if it succeeds-why, then, it's the very best thing in the world."

"I can't quite fancy thinking of Mr. Burgrave like that," murmured Mabel reflectively.

"Mab, I didn't think-"

"Oh, I beg your pardon, Georgie.

If

I didn't laugh I should cry. And there's Dick coming back, and he'll see we have been crying. Talk about something else, quick!"

"I was wondering whether you would like to pay a call or two," said Georgia, thrusting a wet handkerchief hastily into her pocket. "I don't want to drag you out if you are tired still after your journey, but it would be nice for you to know people before all the Christmas festivities begin next week."

"Of course!" Mabel's sudden animation was not wholly assumed for Dick's benefit as he rode past the veranda. "Who is there to call upon?"

"Only your friend, Mrs. Hardy, whose husband is the missionary here and acts as chaplain, and Flora Graham, the colonel's daughter, I am afraid. Nearly all the men here are bachelors or grass-widowers. Two or three ladies will come in from Rahmat-Ullah and the other outlying stations next week, but we are still scarce enough to be valuable."

"That's a state of things of which I highly approve," said Mabel.

"Never knew a woman that didn't," said Dick, entering. "Ask Georgia if she doesn't like to see the men round her chair, though she pretends to think they're attracted by her professional reputation. But Miss Graham is going to call on you, Mab. She's dying to see you, but feared you would be too tired to pay visits this week. In gratitude

for this honor, don't you think you ought to refrain from exercising your fascinations on her young man?"

"Really, Dick, I don't know what you can think of me. Is Miss Graham engaged?"

"Rather; to young Haycraft of the Regiment."

"Ah, I fly at higher game," said Mabel austerely.

"So I should have guessed."

"Oh, Dick, have you seen the Commissioner?" cried Georgia.

"Been closeted with him nearly all morning."

"And was he very horrid?”

"By no means. He didn't make any secret of his reforming intentions, but he gave me no hint as to his method of carrying them out. He only tells that sort of thing to casual fellow-travellers, I suppose. But I think he wished to make himself agreeable, and that I attribute to my having the honor of being Miss Mabel North's brother."

"Ah!" said Mabel wisely.

Late that afternoon she and Georgia set forth to visit Mrs. Hardy, very much against Mabel's will. She represented that she had only parted from the good lady the day before, and had not the slightest desire to renew the acquaintance, but Georgia was firm.

"We will only go in for a minute or two, for we must be back early to meet the Grahams, but I could not bear her to think herself slighted."

When they reached the missionary's bungalow they found it in the throes of a general turn-out. The veranda was piled with furniture, and here Mrs. Hardy, a worn-looking little woman with a lined face, and thin gray hair screwed into an unbecoming knob, received them in the lowest possible spirits. She had always prophesied that the house would go to rack and ruin during her absence in England, and now she was convinced that it had. Only that morning she had discovered

the fragments of her very best damask tablecloth doing duty as dusters, and three silver spoons were missing. Moreover she believed she was on the verge of further discoveries that would compel her to dismiss at least half the servants. Georgia's inquiry after Mr. Hardy elicited the fact that he had a habit of having his meals served in his study, and reading while he partook of them, which was bound to have a prejudicial effect on his digestion in the future, while Mrs. Hardy felt morally certain that he had gone to church in rags for many Sundays past. Yes, he had spoken very cheerfully of several interesting inquirers who had come to him of late, but Mrs. Hardy had, and would continue to have, grave doubts as to the genuineness of their motives. Georgia sighed and turned the conversation to the subject of the journey from the coast, but this only opened the way for a fresh flood of forebodings. The new Commissioner was bent on mischief, and the natives were perceptibly uneasy. Where they were not sullen, they were defiant, and Mrs. Hardy's eagle eye foresaw trouble ahead. Seeing that Georgia was not entirely at one with her, she descended suddenly to details.

"Ah, dear Mrs. North, I see you think I am a pessimist, but when you hear what I have to tell you-! Is-is Miss North in your confidence-politically speaking?" with a meaning glance at Mabel.

"Mrs. Hardy!" cried Georgia in astonishment. "Of course she is. Why not?"

Mrs. Hardy bridled. "I am relieved to hear that Miss North is not so entirely taken up with the Commissioner as to have no thought for her dear brother's interests," she said acidly. "Well, I must tell you that I hear on good authority that Mr. Burgrave intends to allow Bahram Khan to return to Nalapur. In the course of his jour