"Mr. Morpeth looks so calm and detached--almost like a fakir, I don't think anything could take him by surprise," returned Hester with a smile. "Anyhow I'm going to make my visit at last. I have long wanted to see Mr. Morpeth at home, and you know he did invite us to come any afternoon. I don't think he'll mind our going without warning. You see, we never have any time left the day we are at the Girls' Club."
"I'm sure he won't mind," agreed Mrs. Fellowes. "It's only Joe's red-tape fussiness. I once took Mrs. Campbell of Puranapore to call on him when she was staying with us, and his reception of us was charming. But I really don't think there is anything of the fakir in Mr. Morpeth. It always strikes me what a delightful family man he would have made, but instead he has opened his heart to his poor despised race and lives for them. But I've been thinking he has been looking more lonely and sad lately. He has a sorrowful preoccupied air he didn't have when we first knew him. Ah, here we are at Freyville!"
"What a neat, home-like gate!" exclaimed Hester. "I haven't seen anything so tidy since I left Pinkthorpe. How carefully tended his garden looks! How can he manage it? Our compound at Clive's Road was looking quite brown and withered even before I left it."
She looked round with admiration on the well-kept borders, carefully trimmed shrubs and hedges, and the well-watered flowers.
"It's all of a piece--outside and in," said Mrs. Fellowes. "The fact is, my dear, we are too much birds of passage to do justice to our homes here. They are merely camps to us, but to these sons of the soil they are real homes; and that's what Mr. Morpeth wants to make them for his poorer brethren of the Eurasian community, who are too often contented to crowd together in the most miserable sheds. Then Mr. Morpeth gets much better service than we can. His staff is not scattered to the winds every few years like ours. The residents are able to have their retainers growing grey in their service, and they become as perfect as the servants of the best, and fast dying out type, at home. Here comes one of these now! Well, Mootoo, is your master at home?"
"He is, ma'am, and very pleased will he be to see you," said the man, showing his white teeth as he salaamed. One could see from under the edge of his artistically-folded turban, a suspicion of grey hair. His snow white tunic fell in graceful folds about his tall figure as he noiselessly led the way to introduce the visitors.