shouting "Paisa wachawa," which, being interpreted, is "Throw us a copper, guv'nor,' and will run half a mile in hopes of success. Pretty little Pretty little imps they are, with fine regular features, and it is curious that though the men are Jewish of profile the children are Grecian. The Pawindahs or Ghilzais go far afield, and many have been in Australia, and the story of the camel-man who said "All right, boss," to the orders of a transport officer on a frontier campaign, is true and common enough. Sometimes men come back after eighteen years or so in Australia, speaking English fluently. Now and again an Australian lass comes too, presumably of the class that in Africa would be termed bijwoner, and crosses the border to Ghuzni in some comfort and circumstance, after being duly confronted with a magistrate, to see that she goes of her own will. One is given to wonder if she in due course will share the lot of Biddy with the samovar, or if the white blood and spirit will gain ascendancy and rule the Ghilzai roost. In April the clans gather for the return, re-draw their arms for the return journey through the no-man's land of the Waziris, through which each convoy must fight its way, though of late years the British control of the Gomal has helped for the first fifty miles. Among the merchandise that loads the shaggy camels are bale on bale of ready-made frock-coats of black angola, that are the vogue in Afghanistan and Central Asia for all gentlemen of fashion, and the observant say that they find it easier and less costly to bring those same frock-coats through the thousand miles of British India than the hundred miles of Afghan Alsatia. So the border runs, and perhaps, though Bil and Til are but names, and the Frontier Force has gone, and Brown and MacAulay and Cavagnari are dead, the romance of snowy peaks and shaggy camels and nomad races and lawless items will still keep the border the border for many a year to come. Be it remembered, however, that all this only applies to the bitter winter and its spring and autumn. When it comes to the summer, then Tobah! Allemachtig! the blue hills die out in haze, and the red sirocco blows, and the roads are buried in sand, and the whole foot-hills are a fiery furnace, in which only the hardest may walk unsinged. But come summer come winter, there is a fascination about rock and sand and scrub and camel thorn and hairy men that clings to the frontier as it clings to the veldt and the Soudan, and never quite goes out of a man's bones. Till the lion lies down with the lamb, the border will produce fierce men on one side, and good soldiers on the other, to handle them, even though the glory of the Frontier Force as such has departed and the Line holds the frontier by roster. fining-pot for silver and the furnace for gold, and the frontier hills for handy soldiers. The G. F. MACMUNN. FANCY FARM. BY NEIL MUNRO, AUTHOR OF 6 JOHN SPLENDID,' 'THE DAFT DAYS,' ETC. CHAPTER X. MRS POWRIE, the housekeeper of Fancy Farm, was a lady whose attitude to the frolio and ridiculous universe was one, at the cheerfullest, of petulant acquiescence; had she heard that the end of the world was due on Saturday, she would have said no more than "There's a stupid caper for you!" and gone and drawn her savings from the bank. Her views of men were not unkindly, but contemptuous; her standard of the sex being Peter Powrie, whom, speaking French unconsciously, she sometimes called "a gniaf! a perfect gniaf!" and she ought to know, since Peter was her husband. Not a bad man in the main; there were worse in the world, we agreed, even in censorious Schawfield, than Peter Powrie, and his wife herself would probably do any mortal thing to please the creature short of living with him, a trial she had ended half a dozen years ago when he sold her cornelian brooch and bought a pup. "You're lucky to be single, Miss Colquhoun," she remarked with a sigh that was half of feeling, half repletion, as she rose from the supper - table, wheeled her cosy arm-chair to the hearth, and poked the logs on the roaring fire of her private room, which (with a natural loathing of things canine) she had lost her temper more than once to hear the other servants call, in the common argot of the underlings, "pug's parlour." "I'm sure of it!" said the stranger, to whom, in less than half an hour's acquaintance, she had, in a mood evoked by the sense of understanding sympathy, laid bare her whole philosophy, and roughly sketched a life of trial and incredible endurance. "There's nothing like independence. I've quite made up my mind I'll never marry." The middle-aged housekeeper looked at her slyly-at the enviably well-set youthful figure, the merry inviting hazel eyes, the refined and mobile face, the elegant apparel; and coughed a little dubiously. "Touch wood!" she advised, picking up a crochet - needle and stabbing it in her bosom, till she cleared a skene of cotton. "I used to think I felt like that myself, and stilland-on one winter day I went and married Peter Powrie. Men are all silly, but they have a way with them! I'm telling you about my husband since I know very well you'll have the full particulars before you're another day in Schaw field; we're a dreadful folk for clash! If you ever marry, Miss Colquhoun,-and it's like a sprain, you can't tell sometimes how it happens-see and marry a nice old man with a little money by him. And above all, take my word for it, beware of a man either young or old that's daft for dogs!" The lady, whose identity was at the moment being indicated to Sir Andrew Schaw in the dining-room, much to his surprise and entertainment, put a pair of the smallest, slimmest feet on the fender, turned up the front of her outer skirt, as much to reveal the flounces of a green silk petticoat as for economy, and assuming a sober, sympathetic aspect, asked if Mrs Powrie had been long a widow. "I'm not a widow at all," said Mrs Powrie cheerfully. "That's the one vexation Peter ever spared me. But I might as well be, for all the good I get of him. You've heard of men going to the dogs: mine went to them right enoughnothing in Peter Powrie's silly head but Dandie Dinmonts! He would travel a hundred miles to see a show of the tousy brutes, even if it cost him his situation. He's always losing his situation. As good a coachman as ever wore a hat with a cockade, but daft for Dandie Dinmonts! That's men -aye a want of some kind in them! With some it's drink, and with some it's temper, and with most it's the ran-dan generally, but with Peter Powrie it was nothing worse than dogs. I wish it had been horse! He couldn't put up with the neighbourhood because the fashion here was all for Skyes and English terriers. People talk about love and jealousy!" continued Mrs Powrie with a cynical laugh; "the green-eyed monster, as they call it in the 'Supplement,' never bothered me till Peter fell in love with the champion Dandie Dinmont, and him-that's Peter-at the age of fifty! For two years back he's been in a job in Fife, at hardly more than half his proper wages, just to be near his darling! I wonder sometimes what was the Almighty's notion making men. He must have done it for diversion." "His 'prentice han' he tried on man, and then he made the lasses O!"" quoted Miss Colquhoun. "It's a mercy there are different kinds of them." "Have you ever in all your life met a single one you could be bothered with about the house, except for the sake of his wages?" asked the housekeeper, and Miss Colquhoun confessed that, except father, she had not met any. her "A father's different," said Mrs Powrie. "He's bound to learn a little gumption from his children. Perhaps if Peter She checked herself as a maid came into the room to clear the table; and sitting stately in her armchair, crocheting, gave Miss Colquhoun an opportunity to reflect how much of actual life, as in the novels, is taken up with the whim called love and the penny-dip or lottery called matrimony. She had, she realised, been talking nearly all that day of little else than men since she she set out for Schawfield in the morning; there seemed to be something in the air to bring the subject ever uppermost. "What time do you expect your mistress in the morning?" asked Mrs Powrie when they had the room to themselves again, and the other reddened, with a spitfire sparkle of the eyes. "Mistress!" she repeated, "I don't have any; I'm Miss Skene's companion.' "I hope she pays you decently for for your company," retorted Mrs Powrie dryly, clearing her throat. "It used to be always 'my maid' and 'my lady' in my days, and I'm afraid, at my age, I'll never learn the difference." "There's a great deal of difference, all the same," said Miss Colquhoun, "and I'm a Radical-right down Radical! I learned it from my father, and a poem I got at school, called Goldsmith's Deserted Village.' And a bit from Burns "Yon dreadful man! I canna stand him! What a carry-on!" interjected Mrs Powrie. "A maid sells herself, body and soul, for thirty pounds a-year or less to a mistress who can bully her; I have too much temper and conceit of myself for that; I condescend to be Miss Skene's companionit's an art; and reserve the right to be to be cheeky,' to be cheeky," and she smiled delightfully, the spitfire quenched in a flood of humorous self-satisfaction. "I'm not an angel, but I'm "You would never make Sir Andrew ill at ease," said Mrs Powrie, "though you might make Miss Amelia; he takes folks as he takes his meat— the first that comes along, and an appetite for anything that's wholesome." "Why, that's just me !" cried Miss Colquhoun, and then she qualified it. "Unless they happen to be downright fools!" "That's where you're more particular than Sir Andrew ! There's not many fools he can't put up with for a little-only the very vicious. He thought the world of my poor Peter. 'If there were no fools,' he says, 'how would wise men get a living?' There's something in it, Miss-What did you say, now, your first name was?" "I didn't say," replied the other with a smile. "But it'sPenelope," and she blushed. "Penelope," corrected Miss Grace Skene's companion. "Just let it be Penelope, if you don't mind, or simply Pen. The pen, you know, is mightier than the sword: that's father's joke. I can't help being a minister's daughter. I wish to heaven I wasn't! Far too much is expected for the stipend. I'm sorry I mentioned it. Say nothing about the manse. After all, it was a tiny one-United Presbyterian. And I quite agree with youPenelope is ridiculous. A girl in my position might as well be called Cleopatra. Even Miss Skene thought it was presumptuous when she heard it first I saw it in her face." "I hope you're comfortable with your with Miss Skene," said Mrs Powrie. "Some of those madames are pernicketty." "Oh, she's as pernicketty as most, and as short in the temper as myself. That's how we get on so well-for I'm pernicketty in many ways. We understand each other: that's one blessing. I couldn't put up with her for a single day if she did not make allowances, as she expects me to make for her. I'm older than she is, and I hope I'm every bit as sensible." "If ever a girl should have a man of her own, it's you! said Mrs Powrie, genuinely admiring. "There we are! Back to the men again!" exclaimed Penelope impatiently. "I'm sick of the subject. Let us talk of frooks or crochet-patterns, hens or ducks or dogs." Mrs Powrie winced. "Not dogs!" she entreated. "Don't mention dogs to me: I canna abide the wretches." "At least they're better than men, for they never contradict you," said Penelope. "My man never contradicted me: he just paid no attention. It's worse. "I can't stand contradiction myself, and yet, do you know, I love it," confessed Penelope, in the very spirit of the thing itself. "The man who drove me here to-night,-I quite forgot to tell you, he was the most contrairy overbearing man I ever met. It was not exactly in his words, but in his manner. He spoke to me as if I were a silly school-girl. You know how you feel when you think there's someone laughing up their sleeve at you, and still with a sober face and quite respectful." |