Let us drink to it! By the way what will you drink? Our cellar is rather
limited in camp. There's some claret and some whisky-and-soda."

"Whisky-and-soda for me, please," said Thresk.

"And for me too. You take claret, don't you, Stella dear?" and he
lingered upon the "dear" as though he anticipated getting a great deal of
amusement out of her later on. And so she understood him, for there came
a look of trouble into her face and she made a little gesture of
helplessness. Thresk watched and said nothing.

"The decanter's in front of you, Stella," continued Ballantyne. He turned
his attention to his own tumbler, into which Baram Singh had already
poured the whisky; and at once he exclaimed indignantly:

"There's much too much here for me! Good heavens, what next!" and in
Hindustani he ordered Baram Singh to add to the soda-water. Then he
turned again to Thresk. "But I've no doubt you exhausted Chitipur in your
twenty-four hours, didn't you? Of course you are going to write a book."

"Write a book!" cried Thresk. He was surprised into a laugh. "Not I."

Ballantyne leaned forward with a most serious and puzzled face.

"You're not writing a book about India? God bless my soul! D'you hear
that, Stella? He's actually twenty-four hours in Chitipur and he's not
going to write a book about it."

"Six weeks from door to door: or how I made an ass of myself in India,"
said Thresk. "No thank you!"