Under the Deodars

t was a s

at sent it

e ear will

that the bel

bells they

dark rang,

an I

e was a Man and his W

body can possibly object, round Jakko or Observatory Hill. When you see a young man with his pony in a white lather and his hat on the back of his head, flying downhill at fifteen miles an hour to meet a girl who will be properly surpr

pend on dresses and four-hundred-rupee bracelets, and inexpensive luxuries of that kind. He worked very hard, and sent her a letter or a post-card daily. She also wrote to him daily, and

ar, I decline to state positively whether there was anything irretrievably wrong in the relations between the Man's Wife and the Tertium Quid. If there was, and hereon you must form your own opinion, it was the Man's Wife's fault. She was kittenish in her manners, wearing ge

arriage bond, and are revered as such. Again, certain attachments equally old, and, to all appearance, equally venerable, never seem to win any recognised official status; whil

ed to choose her own friends. When she put up her big white muff to her lips, and gazed over it and under her eyebrows at you as she said this thing, you felt that she had been infamously misjudged, and that all the other women's instincts were all wrong;

, then under Jutogh, and lastly up and down the Cart Road as far as the Tara Devi gap in the dusk, s

nd replied that horrid people were unwor

bby I'm sure of it,' said the Man's Wife, and she pulled a letter fro

enerally coupled with the Tertium Quid's; that she was too much of a child to understand the dangers of that sort of thing; that he, her husband, was the last man in the world to interfere jealously with her little amusements and interests, but that it would be better were she to drop the T

one saw the Man's Wife and the Tertium Quid together. They had both gone down to the

e of the most depressing things on this earth, particularly when the procession passes under the wet, dank dip beneath the Rock

es up the hill to attend to old partners. The idea of using a Cemetery as a rendezvous is distinctly a feminine one. A man would have said simply, 'Let people talk. We'll go down the Mall.' A woman is ma

Cemetery keeps half-a-dozen graves permanently open for contingencies and incidental wear and tear. In the Hills these are more usually baby's size, because children who come up weakened and sick from the Plains often succumb to the effect

breaking ground. They had marked out a full-size grave, and the Tertium Quid asked them whether any Sah

Tertium Quid, 'and let

talked for a couple of hours while the grave was being deepened. Then a coo

d the Tertium Quid.

r?' said the

y back just as if a goose

thing, then?' said the

ce. Then he said, dropping a pebble down, 'It is nasty and cold: horribly cold. I don't

day out from the Cemetery through the Mashobra Tunnel up to Fagoo and back, because all the wor

horse tried to bolt uphill, being tired with sta

,' said the Tertium Quid, 'and she will

pass into Simla. That night it rained heavily, and, next day, when the Tertium Quid came to the tryst

he Tertium Quid. 'Fancy being boar

n shining divinely. The road below Mashobra to Fagoo is officially styled the Himalayan–Thibet road; but in spite of its name it is

's Wife merrily, as the horses drew near

rom people who say horrid things, and hubbies who wr

er, and the mare went wide to avoid him forefeet

ife, and looked unspeakable things ove

he stern, and her nostrils cracked while she was trying to realise what was happening. The rain of the night before had rotted the drop-side of the Himalayan–Thibet Road, and it was giving way under her. 'What are you doin

hen the Man's Wife clutched at the mare's head and caught her by the nose instead of the bridle. The brute threw

oar of the man and horse going down. Then everything was quiet, and she called on Frank to leave his mare and walk

her eyes and her mouth open, and her head like the head of a Medusa. She was stopped by a man at the risk of his life, and taken out of the saddle, a limp heap, and put on t

attending the funeral of the Tertium Quid, who was lowered into eighteen inches