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Book, page 131 / 221 Little Sahib's body-servant, it is not seemly for us white men to be attended by folk dressed altogether as servants." "And--and you white men wait at table on horseback?" Stalky pointed to the man's spurs. "These I added for the sake of honour when I came to England," said Imam Din Adam smiled the ghost of a little smile that I began to remember, and we put him on the big couch for refreshments. Stalky asked him how much leave he had, and he said "Six months." "But he'll take another six on medical certificate," said Agnes anxiously. Adam knit his brows. "You don't want to--eh? I know. Wonder what my second in command is doing." Stalky tugged his moustache, and fell to thinking of his Sikhs. "Ah!" said the Infant. "I've only a few thousand pheasants to look after. Come along and dress for dinner. We're just ourselves. What flower is your honour's ladyship commanding for the table?" "Just ourselves?" she said, looking at the crotons in the great hall. "Then let's have marigolds the little cemetery ones." So it was ordered. Now, marigolds to us mean hot weather, discomfort, parting, and death. That smell in our nostrils, and Adam's servant in waiting, we naturally fell back more and more on the old slang, recalling at each glass those who had gone before. We did not sit at the big table, but in the bay window overlooking the park, where they were carting the last of the hay. When twilight fell we would not have candles, but waited for the moon, and continued our talk in the dusk that makes one remember. Young Adam was not interested in our past except where it had touched his future. I think his mother held his hand beneath the
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