She and his cousin May—

     Tactful, talented, debonnaire,

       Decorous foes¹ were they;

     But never can battle of man compare

       With merciless feminine fray².

 

                            Two and One.

Mrs. Hauksbee was sometimes nice to her own sex. Here is a story to prove this; and you can believe just as much as ever you please.

 

Pluffles was a subaltern in the “Unmentionables.” He was callow, even for a subaltern. He was callow all over—like a canary that had not finished fledging itself. The worst of it was he had three times as much money as was good for him; Pluffles' Papa being a rich man and Pluffles being the only son. Pluffles' Mamma adored him. She was only a little less callow than Pluffles and she believed everything he said.

 

Pluffles' weakness was not believing what people said. He preferred what he called “trusting to his own judgment³.” He had as much judgment as he had seat or hands; and this preference tumbled him into trouble once or twice. But the biggest trouble Pluffles ever manufactured came about at Simla—some years ago, when he was four-and-twenty.

 

He began by trusting to his own judgment, as usual, and the result was that, after a time, he was bound hand and foot to Mrs. Reiver's 'rickshaw wheels.

 

There was nothing good about Mrs. Reiver, unless it was her dress. She was bad from her hair—which started life on a Brittany's girl's head—to her boot-heels, which were two and three-eighth inches high. She was not honestly mischievous⁴ like Mrs. Hauksbee; she was wicked in a business-like way.

 

There was never any scandal—she had not generous impulses enough for that. She was the exception which proved the rule that Anglo-Indian ladies are in every way as nice as their sisters at Home. She spent her life in proving that rule.

 

Mrs. Hauksbee and she hated each other

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