No More Learning

He learned
to take thankfully dances which Mrs. Reiver had no intention of giving
him. He learned to shiver for an hour and a quarter on the windward side
of Elysium while Mrs. Reiver was making up her mind to come for a
ride. He learned to hunt for a 'rickshaw, in a light dress-suit under
a pelting rain, and to walk by the side of that 'rickshaw when he had
found it. He learned what it was to be spoken to like a coolie and
ordered about like a cook. He learned all this and many other things
besides. And he paid for his schooling.

Perhaps, in some hazy way, he fancied that it was fine and impressive,
that it gave him a status among men, and was altogether the thing to do.
It was nobody's business to warn Pluffles that he was unwise. The pace
that season was too good to inquire; and meddling with another man's
folly is always thankless work.

Pluffles' Colonel should have ordered him back to his regiment when he
heard how things were going. But Pluffles had got himself engaged to a
girl in England the last time he went home; and if there was one
thing more than another which the Colonel detested, it was a married
subaltern. He chuckled when he heard of the education of Pluffles, and
said it was "good training for the boy. " But it was not good training in
the least.
It led him into spending money beyond his means, which were
good: above that, the education spoilt an average boy and made it a
tenth-rate man of an objectionable kind. He wandered into a bad set, and
his little bill at Hamilton's was a thing to wonder at.

Then Mrs. Hauksbee rose to the occasion. She played her game alone,
knowing what people would say of her; and she played it for the sake of
a girl she had never seen. Pluffles' fiancee was to come out, under the
chaperonage of an aunt, in October, to be married to Pluffles.

At the beginning of August, Mrs. Hauksbee discovered that it was time to
interfere. A man who rides much knows exactly what a horse is going to
do next before he does it. In the same way, a woman of Mrs. Hauksbee's
experience knows accurately how a boy will behave under certain
circumstances--notably when he is infatuated with one of Mrs. Reiver's
stamp. She said that, sooner or later, little Pluffles would break off
that engagement for nothing at all--simply to gratify Mrs. Reiver, who,
in return, would keep him at her feet and in her service just so long as
she found it worth her while.

She said she knew the signs of these things. If she did not, no one else
could.