‘I don’t believe Cutch Behar is anywhere near the Himalayan region,’ interrupted Bertie. ‘You ought to have an atlas on hand when you do this sort of thing; and why stale and pale?’

‘After the late hours and the excitement, of course,’ said Clovis; ‘and I said their homes were in the Himalayas. You can have Himalayan elephants in Cutch Behar, I suppose, just as you have Irish-bred horses running at Ascot.’

‘You said they were going back to the Himalayas,’ objected Bertie.

“Well, they would naturally be sent home to recuperate. It’s the usual thing out there to turn elephants loose in the hills, just as we put horses out to grass in this country.’

Clovis could at least flatter himself that he had infused some of the reckless splendour of the East into his mendacity.

‘Is it all going to be in blank verse?’ asked the critic.

‘Of course not; “Durbar” comes at the end of the fourth line.’

‘That seems so cowardly; however, it explains why you pitched on Cutch Behar.’

‘There is more connection between geographical place-names and poetical inspiration than is generally recognised one of the chief reasons why there are so few really great poems about Russia in our language is that you can’t possibly get a rhyme to names like Smolensk and Tobolsk and Minsk.”

Clovis spoke with the authority of one who has tried.

‘Of course, you could rhyme Omsk with Tomsk,’ he continued; ‘infact, they seem to be there for that purpose, but the public wouldn’t stand that sort of thing indefinitely.’

‘The public will stand a good deal,’ said Bertie malevolently, ‘and so small a proportion of it knows Russian that you could always have an explanatory footnote asserting that the last three letters in Smolensk are not pronounced. It’s quite as believable as your statement about putting elephants out to grass in the Himalayan range.’

‘I’ve got rather a nice bit,’ resumed Clovis with unruffled serenity, ‘giving an evening scene on the outskirts of a jungle village:

‘There is practically no gloaming in tropical countries,’ said Bertie indulgently; ‘but I like the masterly reticence with which you treat the cobra’s motive for gloating. The unknown is proverbially the uncanny. I can picture nervous readers of the Smoky Chimney keeping the light turned on in their bedrooms all night out of sheer sickening uncertainty as to what the cobra might have been gloating about.’

‘Cobras gloat naturally,’ said Clovis, ‘just as wolves are always ravening from mere force of habit, even after they’ve hopelessly overeaten themselves. I’ve got a fine bit of colour painting later on,’ he added, ‘where I describe the dawn coming up over the Brahmaputra river:

‘I’ve never seen the dawn come up over the Brahma-putra river,’ said Bertie, ‘so I can’t say if it’s a good description of the event, but it sounds more like an account of an extensive jewel robbery. Anyhow, the parrots give a good useful touch of local colour. I suppose you’ve introduced some tigers into the