with the nice strong face, and who looked as if he could play polo, might take me in to dinner; but I fell to the lot of someone much more important, and consequently ever so much more dull. Why is it that the more important you get the duller you become? But I had another of the A D.C.'s on my right. He was the smallest of the lot, so, of course, the most conceited. Why is it that small men always are the most conceited? I suppose it is a kind of inverse ratio—the less there is of you the more you must prize it and make the most of it. I am glad there is quite a lot of me. But that little A.D.C. was quite amusing. Conceited people often are in a way they don't quite think.
'Awful joke, have you heard?' he said as soon as I could escape from the dulness of the Revenue Secretary, who had taken me in.
'No,' I said, feeling after five minutes of the Secretary's conversation as if I had not heard a joke for years, 'What is it?'
'Awful joke,' he repeated, chuckling—he was the kind of man who, when he thought he had a good phrase, just worried it to death—'just heard it from one of the Viceroy's staff. Ever heard of the Nawab of Chandalpur? What? No? Why, bless my soul, he's an awful bug. Thinks no end of himself. Allied state, you know, not a dependency—all that sort of rot. Tommy-rot I call it. Well, old Nawab of Chandalpur arrives outside Delhi Station one a.m. Christmas mornin'. Should have been there ten p.m. Christmas Eve. Devil of a row because he wasn't. Anyway, there he was,
