Page:An American Girl in India.djvu/237

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I MEET AN A.D.C.
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much of the Indian A.D.C. that I was quite curious to meet him. I saw him that night—no less than four of him. Lieutenant-Governors are not attended like that generally, I believe, but this being a special occasion, everything red and gold and ornamental was doubled. I was a bit disappointed in those A.D.C.'s—not so much individually as collectively. I expected them to be much more of a type. But I am afraid that is rather like the Englishman who expects to find every American young woman a reproduction of the Gibson Girl—in which expectation, I guess, he is generally mightily disappointed. If those A.D.C.'s had not been in uniform you never would have picked them out as belonging to the same jat. By the way, I have discovered the meaning of that word jat, and I used it then quite unconsciously. That is the result of having lived with Berengaria. Like lots of Indian words it is most useful and expressive, and Berengaria having a store of such expressions, one finds one's self slipping quite naturally into the use of them. Jat means caste, and you use it in the sense of birth or rank. If you want to say anything nasty of anybody in a lady-like way you say, 'Oh, she's no jat, and the poor thing is condemned straight away.

But about those A.D.C.'s. They were very young. They were very clean as only Englishmen can be. They were very pleased with themselves. They looked rather like over-grown schoolboys in absurd Eton jackets. But there all points of similarity ended. I rather hoped that the one