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Kipling, Rudyard, 1865-1936

"Plain Tales from the Hills"

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. He was a shy little man, and
five days were wasted before he realized that Mrs. Dumoise was
burning with something worse than simple fever, and three days more
passed before he ventured to call on Mrs. Shute, the Engineer's
wife, and timidly speak about his trouble. Nearly every household
in India knows that Doctors are very helpless in typhoid.


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