'I'll go home first and see,' was the rider's answer. 'You can drive
him over--at eight, remember.'

Scott moved leisurely to his room, and changed into the evening-dress
of the season and the country: spotless white linen from head to
foot, with a broad silk cummerbund. Dinner at the Martyns' was a
decided improvement on the goat-mutton, twiney-tough fowl, and
tinned entrees of the Club. But it was a great pity Martyn could not
afford to send his sister to the Hills for the hot weather. As an
Acting District Superintendent of Police, Martyn drew the magnificent
pay of six hundred depreciated silver rupees a month, and his little
four-roomed bungalow said just as much. There were the usual
blue-and-white striped jail-made rugs on the uneven floor; the usual
glass studded Amritsar _phulkaris_ draped to nails driven into the
flaking whitewash of the walls; the usual half-dozen chairs that did
not match, picked up at sales of dead men's effects; and the usual
streaks of black grease where the leather punka-thong ran through the
wall. It was as though everything had been unpacked the night before
to be repacked next morning. Not a door in the house was true on its
hinges. The little windows, fifteen feet up, were darkened with
wasp-nests, and lizards hunted flies between the beams of the
wood-ceiled roof. But all this was part of Scott's life. Thus did
people live who had such an income; and in a land where each man's
pay, age, and position are printed in a book, that all may read, it
is hardly worth while to play at pretences in word or deed. Scott
counted eight years' service in the Irrigation Department, and drew
eight hundred rupees a month, on the understanding that if he served
the State faithfully for another twenty-two years he could retire on
a pension of some four hundred rupees a month. His working life,
which had been spent chiefly under canvas or in temporary shelters