Page:Red Rugs of Tarsus.djvu/43

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which seems far away, and is missed occasionally in spite of the novelty of Tarsus life and the cordiality of the missionaries. At the Dougty-Wylies, I am able to dress in the evening, and Herbert always looks best to me in his dinner-coat. We are unconventional until we get back into convention: then we wonder how and why we ever broke loose.

With tea served when you wake up, ten o'clock help-yourself-when-you-want breakfasts, a morning canter, siesta after lunch, and whiskey-and-soda and smokes in the evening—we are thirty miles only from Tarsus, and yet three thousand. We are back in an English country home. We can smell the box and feel the cold and fear the rain—so strong is the influence of the interior—until we step out-of-doors into the sunshine that makes us thankful, after all, that "back in England" was only a dream.

The Major is still in his thirties but has had a whole lifetime of adventure crowded into fif