A weak
man doesn't say: 'Give me this and that.' He whines 'Why haven't I been given
this and that?' If you were in the Army, I should say learn to spin plates or
play a tambourine with your toes. As it is--ask! You belong to a Service that
ought to be able to command the Channel Fleet, or set a leg at twenty minutes'
notice, and yet you hesitate over asking to escape from a squashy green
district where you admit you are not master. Drop the Bengal Government
altogether. Even Darjiling is a little out-of-the-way hole. I was there once,
and the rents were extortionate. Assert yourself. Get the Government of India
to take you over. Try to get on the Frontier, where every man has a grand
chance if he can trust himself. Go somewhere! Do something! You have twice the
wits and three times the presence of the men up here, and, and"--
Mrs. Hauksbee paused for breath; then continued--"and in any way you look at
it, you ought to. You who could go so far!"
"I don't know," said Yeere, rather taken aback by the unexpected eloquence. "1
haven't such a good opinion of myself."
It was not strictly Platonic, hut it was Policy. Mrs. Hauksbee laid her hand
lightly upon the ungloved paw that rested on the turned-back 'rickshaw hood,
and, looking the man full in the face, said tenderly, almost too tenderly, 'I
believe in you if you mistrust yourself.
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