It's bad enough having to go by these beastly steamers to India at all, without having one's breath poisoned by--" the rest of the sentence died away inaudibly in a general murmur of ineffective grumbling.
"Why do you think she is EXCLUSIVE ?" I asked Hilda as we strolled on towards the stern, out of the spoilt child's hearing.
"Why, didn't you notice ?--she looked about her when she came on deck to see whether there was anybody who WAS anybody sitting there, whom she might put her chair near.

But the Governor of Madras hadn't come up from his cabin yet; and the wife of the chief Commissioner of Oude had three civilians hanging about her seat; and the daughters of the Commander-in-Chief drew their skirts away as she passed.

So she did the next best thing--sat as far apart as she could from the common herd: meaning all the rest of us.

If you can't mingle at once with the Best People, you can at least assert your exclusiveness negatively, by declining to associate with the mere multitude." "Now, Hilda, that is the first time I have ever known you to show any feminine ill-nature!" "Ill-nature! Not at all.

I am merely trying to arrive at the lady's character for my own guidance.