Till he went Home, Tods ranked
some few degrees before the Viceroy in popular estimation. But for the little
life of him Tods could not understand why.
In the Legal Member's private-paper-box still lies the rough draft of the Sub-
Montane Tracts Ryotwari Revised Enactment; and, opposite the twenty-second
clause, pencilled in blue chalk, and signed by the Legal Member, are the words
"Tods' Amendment."
IN THE PRIDE OF HIS YOUTH.
"Stopped in the straight when the race was his own!
Look at him cutting it--cur to the bone!"
"Ask ere the youngster be rated and chidden,
What did he carry and how was he ridden?
Maybe they used him too much at the start;
Maybe Fate's weight-cloths are breaking his heart."
--Life's Handicap.
When I was telling you of the joke that The Worm played off on the Senior
Subaltern, I promised a somewhat similar tale, but with all the jest left out.
This is that tale:
Dicky Hatt was kidnapped in his early, early youth--neither by landlady's
daughter, housemaid, barmaid, nor cook, but by a girl so nearly of his own
caste that only a woman could have said she was just the least little bit in
the world below it. This happened a month before he came out to India, and five
days after his one-and-twentieth birthday.
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