wicked, long-nosed person pervading fairy tales. When I was fourteen, I was sent to an English school in Paris, and there I learnt to dance, to sing, and accompany myself on the guitar (it was such a nice portable instrument, suitable to India). It had been arranged that I was to join my people when I was eighteen, and already my outfit was under discussion, my escort for the passage sought for, when the news arrived of my father’s sudden death. He had been killed by a fall from his horse, when out pigsticking, and Emma was returning home alone, a widow in straitened circum[39]stances. No, they had never saved one single rupee; their two pairs of hands had ever been open. They entertained lavishly; she dressed magnificently; he kept several race-horses, and their household expenses were enormous. For they had caught some of the infection from their surroundings, and the recklessness and display of the palace was reflected in their home. All things considered, Emma bore the change in her circumstances with surprising equanimity. She rarely complained. She was so easily amused and interested, so easily roused to animation; but it made me sad to note her wandering eye, when we were abroad, always scanning the crowd, in intent search for some familiar face, some one she knew in old days.

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And then her disappointments: the Sugdens, who scarcely deigned to bow to [40]her; the Woden-Spunners, who invited us to a crush, and left us totally unnoticed all the evening—and the cabs and our gloves alone had come to seventeen shillings. Poor Emma explained to me, with pitiful eloquence, that the Woden-Spunners had never been intimate friends. However Emma was soon to discover that every one was not like the Woden-Spunners.

[40]

One morning, we were shopping in the Army and Navy Stores—my father had always been a subscriber, and Emma clung to “the Stores” as if they embodied a faint, faint reflection of her more prosperous days. The various departments were crammed full, and I never remembered to have seen such a long double line of carriages in waiting, or such an assorted crowd of dogs in durance on the steps.

Our purchases were, needless to say, [41]moderate, and we carried them ourselves. They consisted on this occasion of a packet of candles, a packet of bloaters, an untrimmed straw hat, a pound of fresh butter, and two pounds of pressed beef.

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