"Oh dear, for what did you marry me, Cecil?" she asked one evening impatiently, when she heard the strains of military music coming from the forbidden band-stand, and knew that all the little gaiety of the place was centred there.
"To be a helpmate to me, Clare," he replied gravely, "and to share with me, so far as becomes my wife, my labours in the vineyard of our Divine Master. In our little Bengali church are regular Sabbath services and weekly prayer-meetings; there are four _patshalas_ or elementary schools; but to not one of these have you gone; there are much evangelistic work and colportage work to be done, yet you assist in them not, and will not even sing the hymns I have translated from the _Tembavani_."
"If I did, Cecil--dear Cecil, would you let me go even once a week to the military promenade--I do so love the band?" she asked, with her eyes full of tears.
"No; such frivolity becomes not my wife," was the firm reply.
Repiningly she obeyed his dictum in every respect, and when other ladies ventured to remonstrate with her, Clare, to do her justice, ever upheld her husband, and treated him with respect and honour.
Next day, ere the sun had risen, Clare Thorne, attended by Chuttur Sing, her native groom, went forth for her morning ride while the air was yet cool and delicious, and in every European she saw dreading to meet Wilmot, left the station behind her at a canter. She was clad in a light brown holland habit, trimmed with red braid; she wore a broad hat and long feather, and looked strikingly handsome.
Once or twice she looked back to the cantonment, and murmured to herself how strange it was to think that he should be there--he, after all! The civilians' bungalows were built on the little hills, where a puff of wind might be caught; but the barracks and sepoy lines occupied the centre of an arid and unsheltered plain, where never came a breath of wind to fan the withered cheek, or to drive away the fever and sickness for ever lingering there. As usual, the _site_ of the cantonments was a blunder, and there our soldiers were doomed to languish, swelter, and perish by cholera or sunstroke, for the barracks had been built, and being so, had to be occupied.