back 'The Ugliest Man in Asia.' Well, a new leading light from home was arriving to join the select circle among the Simla snows, and all the other leading lights went out to welcome him. The ceremony over, they adjourned to the club, where India always does adjourn when the business of the day is over, and they one and all noticed a strange gleam in the eye of 'The Ugliest Man in Asia' that they had never noticed there before. He ordered a peg straight away—a thing he seldom did. He drank it off at one go and ordered another—a thing he had never done before. And then he actually beamed upon the other astonished leading lights.
'By Jove, old fellow,' they said, 'what's up?'
'Have a drink,' he cried—'have drinks all round,' he added recklessly—he who had never so much as given his dearest friend a 'split' before. 'Have drinks all round.'
Mechanically they took the drinks, and waited wondering.
'The Ugliest Man in Asia' raised his glass—his third.
'I've always doubted,' he said, and then he stopped and laughed and blushed all over. 'I've always doubted whether it was possible for anybody to be uglier than I am.' He stopped and laughed again, and slapped his knee. 'But, by Jove, I know now. I've seen him.'
But they tell me that public opinion was very much divided on the point, and that voting for 'The Ugliest Man in Asia' was quite a popular after-dinner game in Simla for quite a long time afterwards.
