No More Learning

The Three Men had also a month's leave each. Peythroppe put the Gazette
down and said bad words. Then there came from the compound the soft
"pad-pad" of camels--"thieves' camels," the bikaneer breed that don't
bubble and howl when they sit down and get up.

After that I don't know what happened. This much is certain.

Peythroppe disappeared--vanished like smoke--and the long foot-rest
chair in the house of the Three Men was broken to splinters. Also a
bedstead departed from one of the bedrooms.

Mrs. Hauksbee said that Mr. Peythroppe was shooting in Rajputana with
the Three Men; so we were compelled to believe her.

At the end of the month, Peythroppe was gazetted twenty days' extension
of leave; but there was wrath and lamentation in the house of Castries.
The marriage-day had been fixed, but the bridegroom never came; and the
D'Silvas, Pereiras, and Ducketts lifted their voices and mocked Honorary
Lieutenant Castries as one who had been basely imposed upon. Mrs.
Hauksbee went to the wedding, and was much astonished when Peythroppe
did not appear. After seven weeks, Peythroppe and the Three Men returned
from Rajputana.
Peythroppe was in hard, tough condition, rather white,
and more self-contained than ever.

One of the Three Men had a cut on his nose, cause by the kick of a gun.
Twelve-bores kick rather curiously.

Then came Honorary Lieutenant Castries, seeking for the blood of his
perfidious son-in-law to be. He said things--vulgar and "impossible"
things which showed the raw rough "ranker" below the "Honorary," and I
fancy Peythroppe's eyes were opened. Anyhow, he held his peace till the
end; when he spoke briefly. Honorary Lieutenant Castries asked for a
"peg" before he went away to die or bring a suit for breach of promise.

Miss Castries was a very good girl. She said that she would have no
breach of promise suits. She said that, if she was not a lady, she
was refined enough to know that ladies kept their broken hearts to
themselves; and, as she ruled her parents, nothing happened. Later on,
she married a most respectable and gentlemanly person. He travelled for
an enterprising firm in Calcutta, and was all that a good husband should
be.

So Peythroppe came to his right mind again, and did much good work, and
was honored by all who knew him. One of these days he will marry; but he
will marry a sweet pink-and-white maiden, on the Government House List,
with a little money and some influential connections, as every wise man
should. And he will never, all his life, tell her what happened during
the seven weeks of his shooting-tour in Rajputana.

But just think how much trouble and expense--for camel hire is not
cheap, and those Bikaneer brutes had to be fed like humans--might have
been saved by a properly conducted Matrimonial Department, under the
control of the Director General of Education, but corresponding direct
with the Viceroy.