No More Learning

You who could go so far! "

"I don't know," said Yeere, rather taken aback by the unexpected
eloquence. "1 haven't such a good opinion of myself. "

It was not strictly Platonic, but it was Policy. Mrs. Hauksbee laid
her hand lightly upon the ungloved paw that rested on the turned-back
'rickshaw hood, and, looking the man full in the face, said tenderly,
almost too tenderly, "I believe in you if you mistrust yourself. Is that
enough, my friend? "

"It is enough," answered Otis, very solemnly.

He was silent for a long time, redreaming the dreams that he had dreamed
eight years ago, but through them all ran, as sheet-lightning through
golden cloud, the light of Mrs. Hauksbee's violet eyes.

Curious and impenetrable are the mazes of Simla life--the only existence
in this desolate land worth the living. Gradually it went abroad among
men and women, in the pauses between dance, play and Gymkhana, that Otis
Yeere, the man with the newly-lit light of self-confidence in his eyes,
had "done something decent" in the wilds whence he came. He had brought
an erring Municipality to reason, appropriated the funds on his own
responsibility, and saved the lives of hundreds, He knew more about
the Gullals than any living man. Had a vast knowledge of the aboriginal
tribes; was, in spite of his juniority, the greatest authority on the
aboriginal Gullals. No one quite knew who or what the Gullals were till
The Mussuck, who had been calling on Mrs.
Hauksbee, and prided himself
upon picking people's brains, explained they were a tribe of ferocious
hillmen, somewhere near Sikkim, whose friendship even the Great Indian
Empire would find it worth her while to secure. Now we know that Otis
Yeere had showed Mrs. Hauksbee his MS notes of six years' standing on
the same Gullals. He had told her, too, how, sick and shaken with the
fever their negligence had bred, crippled by the loss of his pet clerk,
and savagely angry at the desolation in his charge, he had once damned
the collective eyes of his "intelligent local board" for a set of
haramzadas. Which act of "brutal and tyrannous oppression" won him
a Reprimand Royal from the Bengal Government; but in the anecdote as
amended for Northern consumption we find no record of this. Hence we are
forced to conclude that Mrs. Hauksbee "edited" his reminiscences before
sowing them in idle ears, ready, as she well knew, to exaggerate good or
evil. And Otis Yeere bore himself as befitted the hero of many tales.

"You can talk to me when you don't fall into a brown study. Talk now,
and talk your brightest and best," said Mrs. Hauksbee.

Otis needed no spur. Look to a man who has the counsel of a woman of or
above the world to back him. So long as he keeps his head, he can meet
both sexes on equal ground--an advantage never intended by Providence,
who fashioned Man on one day and Woman on another, in sign that neither
should know more than a very little of the other's life. Such a man goes
far, or, the counsel being withdrawn, collapses suddenly while his world
seeks the reason.

Generalled by Mrs.