He was a good Doctor and never
quarrelled with any one, not even with our Deputy Commissioner, who had the
manners of a bargee and the tact of a horse. He married a girl as round and as
sleepy-looking as himself. She was a Miss Hillardyce, daughter of "Squash"
Hillardyce of the Berars, who married his Chief's daughter by mistake. But that
is another story.
A honeymoon in India is seldom more than a week long; but there is nothing to
hinder a couple from extending it over two or three years. This is a delightful
country for married folk who are wrapped up in one another. They can live
absolutely alone and without interruption--just as the Dormice did. These two
little people retired from the world after their marriage, and were very happy.
They were forced, of course, to give occasional dinners, but they made no
friends hereby, and the Station went its own way and forgot them; only saying,
occasionally, that Dormouse was the best of good fellows, though dull. A Civil
Surgeon who never quarrels is a rarity, appreciated as such.
Few people can afford to play Robinson Crusoe anywhere--least of all in India,
where we are few in the land, and very much dependent on each other's kind
offices. Dumoise was wrong in shutting himself from the world for a year, and
he discovered his mistake when an epidemic of typhoid broke out in the Station
in the heart of the cold weather, and his wife went down.
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