amusing. I made out, however, that his knowledge of our own country and our own period was considerably out of date; he appeared to know little of present-day affairs, though he had a fine old store of anecdotes of a previous generation. But a chance remark of his accounted for this.
"I left England for India and the East when I was twenty-one," he said to me one evening in casual conversation, "and I never saw its shores again until I'd turned fifty. And now that I'm back—and some years, too—I don't want to see any more of it than I can see from the top of my dear old tower! Here I am, and here I stick!"
I wondered if he meant his young and pretty ward to stick there, too—but those were early days to put the question to him. Still, by that time I had fallen in love with Madrasia; it would have been a most unheard-of thing if I hadn't! And already I meant to move all the powers that are in heaven and earth to win her—for which reason I was devoutly thankful when, on the fourth day of my stay, winter suddenly disappeared as if by magic, and springtide again
