Rudyard Kipling: 440+ Short Stories in One Edition (Illustrated). Редьярд Джозеф Киплинг

I mean some one else. Now she's going out. What a thoroughly objectionable couple she and The Dancing Master make! Which reminds me. Do you suppose they'll ever dance together?"

      "Wait and see. I don't envy her the conversation of The Dancing Master—loathly man. His wife ought to be up here before long."

      "Do you know anything about him?"

      "Only what he told me. It may be all a fiction. He married a girl bred in the country, I think, and, being an honorable, chivalrous soul, told me that he repented his bargain and sent her to her mother as often as possible—a person who has lived in the Doon since the memory of man and goes to Mussoorie when other people go Home. The wife is with her at present. So he says."

      'Babies?'

      "One only, but he talks of his wife in a revolting way. I hated him for it. He thought he was being epigrammatic and brilliant."

      "That is a vice peculiar to men. I dislike him because he is generally in the wake of some girl, disappointing the Eligibles. He will persecute May Holt no more, unless I am much mistaken."

      "No. I think Mrs. Delville may occupy his attention for a while."

      "Do you suppose she knows that he is the head of a family?"

      "Not from his lips. He swore me to eternal secrecy. Wherefore I tell you. Don't you know that type of man?"

      "Not intimately, thank goodness! As a general rule, when a man begins to abuse his wife to me, I find that the Lord gives me wherewith to answer him according to his folly; and we part with a coolness between us. I laugh."

      "I'm different. I've no sense of humor."

      "Cultivate it, then. It has been my mainstay for more years than I care to think about. A well-educated sense of Humor will save a woman when Religion, Training, and Home influences fail; and we may all need salvation sometimes."

      "Do you suppose that the Delville woman has humor?"

      "Her dress betrays her. How can a Thing who wears her supple'ment under her left arm have any notion of the fitness of things—much less their folly? If she discards The Dancing Master after having once seen him dance, I may respect her, Otherwise—

      "But are we not both assuming a great deal too much, dear? You saw the woman at Peliti's—half an hour later you saw her walking with The Dancing Master—an hour later you met her here at the Library."

      "Still with The Dancing Master, remember."

      "Still with The Dancing Master, I admit, but why on the strength of that should you imagine"—

      "I imagine nothing. I have no imagination. I am only convinced that The Dancing Master is attracted to The Dowd because he is objectionable in every way and she in every other. If I know the man as you have described him, he holds his wife in slavery at present."

      "She is twenty years younger than he."

      "Poor wretch! And, in the end, after he has posed and swaggered and lied—he has a mouth under that ragged moustache simply made for lies—he will be rewarded according to his merits."

      "I wonder what those really are," said Mrs. Mallowe.

      But Mrs. Hauksbee, her face close to the shelf of the new books, was humming softly: "What shall he have who killed the Deer!" She was a lady of unfettered speech.

      One month later, she announced her intention of calling upon Mrs. Delville. Both Mrs. Hauksbee and Mrs. Mallowe were in morning wrappers, and there was a great peace in the land.

      "I should go as I was," said Mrs. Mallowe. "It would be a delicate compliment to her style."

      Mrs. Hauksbee studied herself in the glass.

      "Assuming for a moment that she ever darkened these doors, I should put on this robe, after all the others, to show her what a morning wrapper ought to be. It might enliven her. As it is, I shall go in the dove-colored—sweet emblem of youth and innocence—and shall put on my new gloves."

      "If you really are going, dirty tan would be too good; and you know that dove—color spots with the rain."

      "I care not. I may make her envious. At least I shall try, though one cannot expect very much from a woman who puts a lace tucker into her habit."

      "Just Heavens! When did she do that?"

      "Yesterday—riding with The Dancing Master. I met them at the back of Jakko, and the rain had made the lace lie down. To complete the effect, she was wearing an unclean terai with the elastic under her chin. I felt almost too well content to take the trouble to despise her."

      "The Hawley Boy was riding with you. What did he think?"

      "Does a boy ever notice these things? Should I like him if he did? He stared in the rudest way, and just when I thought he had seen the elastic, he said, 'There's something very taking about that face.' I rebuked him on the spot. I don't approve of boys being taken by faces."

      "Other than your own. I shouldn't be in the least surprised if the Hawley Boy immediately went to call."

      "I forbade him. Let her be satisfied with The Dancing Master, and his wife when she comes up. I'm rather curious to see Mrs. Bent and the Delville woman together."

      Mrs. Hauksbee departed and, at the end of an hour, returned slightly flushed.

      "There is no limit to the treachery of youth! I ordered the Hawley Boy, as he valued my patronage, not to call. The first person I stumble over—literally stumble over—in her poky, dark, little drawing-room is, of course, the Hawley Boy. She kept us waiting ten minutes, and then emerged as though he had been tipped out of the dirty-clothes basket. You know my way, dear, when I am all put out. I was Superior, crrrushingly Superior! 'Lifted my eyes to Heaven, and had heard of nothing—'dropped my eyes on the carpet and 'really didn't know'—'played with my cardcase and 'supposed so.' The Hawley Boy giggled like a girl, and I had to freeze him with scowls between the sentences."

      "And she?"

      "She sat in a heap on the edge of a couch, and managed to convey the impression that she was suffering from stomach-ache, at the very least. It was all I could do not to ask after her symptoms. When I rose she grunted just like a buffalo in the water—too lazy to move."

      "Are you certain?"—

      "Am I blind, Polly? Laziness, sheer laziness, nothing else—or her garments were only constructed for sitting down in. I stayed for a quarter of an hour trying to penetrate the gloom, to guess what her surroundings were like, while she stuck out her tongue."

      "Lu—cy!"

      "Well—I'll withdraw the tongue, though I'm sure if she didn't do it when I was in the room, she did the minute I was outside. At any rate, she lay in a lump and grunted. Ask the Hawley Boy, dear. I believe the grunts were meant for sentences, but she spoke so indistinctly that I can't swear to it."

      "You are incorrigible, simply."

      "I am not! Treat me civilly, give me peace with honor, don't put the only available seat facing the window, and a child may eat jam in my lap before Church. But I resent being grunted at. Wouldn't you? Do you suppose that she communicates her views on life and love to The Dancing Master in a set of modulated 'Grmphs'?"

      "You attach too much importance to The Dancing Master."

      "He came as we went, and The Dowd grew almost cordial at the sight of him. He smiled greasily, and moved about that darkened dog-kennel in a suspiciously familiar way."

      "Don't be uncharitable. Any sin but that I'll forgive."

      "Listen to the voice of History. I am only describing what I saw. He entered, the heap on the sofa revived slightly, and the Hawley Boy and I came away together. He is disillusioned, but I felt it my duty to lecture him severely for going there. And that's all."

      "Now for Pity's sake leave the wretched creature and The Dancing Master alone. They never did you any harm."

      "No harm? To dress as an example and