painful for his grandmother and his parents to listen to him.
“What a pity, Otto, that you had to leave India!”
“Oh, bah, Granny, what a country! It’s all very well for you to talk: you know India as the wife of a resident and as the wife of the governor-general. But for young people, starting life . . .”
“Papa would have helped you, you know. . . .”
“A lot of help Papa could have given! . . . A beastly country; a dirty, wretched country!”
“But, Otto, I thought it delightful.”
“No doubt, in your palace at Buitenzorg. That goes without saying. But were you ever clerk to the magistrates at Rankas-Betoeng?”
“No.”
“No, of course not. And that with a wife who topples over like a ninepin, twice a week, with the heat, flat on the floor!”
“Otto!”
“Oh, come, Grandmamma! It’s the most confounded, beastly, filthy country I ever was in. We had much better sell those colonies to England; she’ll only take them from us, one day, if we don’t.”
“Otto, really I’m not used to this language!”
“Oh, yes, Granny, I know all that official bombast about India! But we can’t all be governor-general or colonial minister. If I ever become that, I shall begin to worship India at once.”
“You’re upset because Frances is ill.”
“Ill? Ill? It takes a woman to be ill. She’s
