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“To work, Mary, to work,” cried the Collector, touching his wife on the shoulder with a switch.

Mrs. Turton got up awkwardly. “What do you want me to do? Oh, those purdah women! I never thought any would come. Oh dear!”

A little group of Indian ladies had been gathering in a third quarter of the grounds, near a rustic summer-house in which the more timid of them had already taken refuge. The rest stood with their backs to the company and their faces pressed into a bank of shrubs. At a little distance stood their male relatives, watching the venture. The sight was significant: an island bared by the turning tide, and bound to grow.

“I consider they ought to come over to me.”

“Come along, Mary, get it over.”

“I refuse to shake hands with any of the men, unless it has to be the Nawab Bahadur.”

“Whom have we so far?” He glanced along the line. “H’m! h’m! much as one expected. We know why he’s here, I think—over that contract, and he wants to get the right side of me for Mohurram, and he’s the astrologer who wants to dodge the municipal building regulations, and he’s that Parsi, and he’s—Hullo! there he goes—smash into our hollyhocks. Pulled the left rein when he meant the right. All as usual.”