Anna Lombard, page 49 by Victoria Cross
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nd."
"What on earth are you driving at now?" I asked, more crossly still, for I did feel excessively irritable, and, so to speak, unnerved that morning. I wheeled my chair round on its hind legs and stared at him sulkily. "I'm not intemperate."
"Yes, you are," persisted the doctor, stolidly; "you are intemperately virtuous, and it won't do. You won't even have the consolation of that girl of yours weeping over your grave. She won't coine down to Burtnah to do it. You drive things to extremes, and one can't stand extremes here. You are extremely moderate, and it won't pay. You should be moderately moderate. The moderate man is the only one who lives here. Moderately bad, moderately good, drinks moderately, eats moderately and is moderately virtuous. A man is made, apparently, for alternate vice and virtue; and this alternation suits his health better than a strict adherence to either. That theory has been threshed out in a novel called ' The Woman Who Didn't.' I would advise you to read it."
"I think you are talking a d---d lot of rot," I said, angrily, and got up and walked out of the club-house. But in my heart I knew the doctor was right with limitations. I went as usual to the court-house and then back at noon to my bungalow. I had no heart for billiards or cards or any of the club diversions. I had hardly got inside my compound gates when a wild figure ran toward me, tearing its yellow tunic, and throwing handfuls of dust against its breast.
"My child, sahib! my child, my only child! Give me back my child!" and then, as it groveled in the dust at my feet, I recognized Jhuldoo, the old Burman, father of Lulloo.
"I haven't got your child," I said, wearily for my head was aching, my eyes swollen, and life in general was a burden.
"No, sahib, she is dead, dead, hanged in the old stable by the bridge that spans the river; and Jhnldoo is childless, childless!" and ne rocked himself backward and forward, sitting in the narrow path-way that ran up to the house.
I stood