"Well, no, I can't say I do. My father reads a deal of poetry aloud."

"And it bores you?"

"Well, I don't understand it," he said, slowly and candidly.

"Don't you even read the papers?" asked Diana, wondering.

He started.

"Why, I should think I do!" he cried. "I should rather think I do!
That's another thing altogether--that's not books."

"Then perhaps you read the debate last night?" She looked at him with a
kindling eye.

"Of course I did--every word of it! Do you know what those Radical
fellows are up to now? They'll never rest until we've lost the
Khaibar--and then the Lord only knows what'll happen."

Diana flew into discussion--quick breath, red cheeks! Mrs. Colwood
looked on amazed.

Presently both appealed to her, the Anglo-Indian. But she smiled and
stammered--declining the challenge. Beside their eagerness, their
passion, she felt herself tongue-tied. Captain Roughsedge had seen two
years' service on the Northwest Frontier; Diana had ridden through the
Khaibar with her father and a Lieutenant-Governor. In both the sense of
England's historic task as the guardian of a teeming India against