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“But surely that is Sir Dugald’s business?” laughed Cecil.

“Sir Dugald can’t do everything. He can’t render the Um-ul-Pasha and the other ladies at the Palace the civilities which are imperatively due to them, and he can’t conciliate or madden the ladies of the European colony by delicately adjusted hospitalities as she can. If I may say so, Cousin Elma represents the social half of her most gracious Majesty, and Sir Dugald, the Balio Bey as they call him, the administrative half.”

“And which is the more important?” asked Cecil.

“Too hard. Ask me another,” said Charlie.

“Well, which of them rules the other?” asked Cecil.

“That is a delicate point,” returned Charlie, “and opinions naturally differ; but if you ask me, I should say that Sir Dugald does it in reality, but that Cousin Elma thinks she does, and so both are satisfied.”

“Well, I think I should prefer it the other way,” said Cecil, meditatively, and Charlie laughed.

“That is exactly what I should have imagined,” he said. “But, joking apart, you can see that others consider that Cousin Elma has a right to think a good deal of herself. Look at the people here, for instance. Happily, we have no very big-wigs on board, or there might be trouble. In any case, Cousin Elma, as the wife of a major-general, would carry things with a pretty high hand among the army set, but there would be difficulty with the wives of the bigger civilians. But it’s all right with them too now, because Sir Dugald is a political. They know their duty too well to be unpleasant, and besides, it is quite on the cards that Sir Dugald might be useful to any of them any day, if it was desired to find a nice out-of-the-way berth for some unfortunate relative who had fooled away his chances, as Sir Dugald sympathetically remarked to me was my case, the only time I saw him.”