"Son of Wick - old Wick of Chota-Buldana? Ask him to dinner,
dear," said the aged men.

"What a nice boy!" said the matrons and the maids.

"First-class place, Simla. Oh, ri - - ipping!" said Bobby Wick,
and ordered new white cord breeches on the strength of it.

"We're in a bad way," wrote Revere to Bobby at the end of two
months. "Since you left, the Regiment has taken to fever and is
fairly rotten with it - two hundred in hospital, about a hundred
in cells - drinking to keep off fever - and the Companies on
parade fifteen file strong at the outside. There's rather more
sickness in the out-villages than I care for, but then I'm so
blistered with prickly-heat that I'm ready to hang myself. What's
the yarn about your mashing a Miss Haverley up there? Not serious,
I hope? You're over-young to hang millstones round your neck, and
the Colonel will turf you out of that in double-quick time if you
attempt it."

It was not the Colonel that brought Bobby out of Simla, but a much
more to be respected Commandant. The sickness in the out-villages
spread, the Bazar was put out of bounds, and then came the news
that the Tail Twisters must go into camp. The message flashed to
the Hill stations. - "Cholera - Leave stopped - Officers
recalled." Alas, for the white gloves in the neatly soldered
boxes, the rides and the dances and picnics that were to be, the
loves half spoken, and the debts
unpaid! Without demur and without question, fast as tonga could