Miss Verena was a natural genius, and he hoped very much she [Miss Chancellor] wasn't going to take the nature out of her. She could study up as she went along; she had got the great thing that you couldn't learn, a kind of divine afflatus, as the ancients used to say, and she had better just begin on that.

Drivelling back to the shanty at midday presented him with a distracting gamble over lunch.

You're not going out wearing that creased shirt, are you?

On 13 June the peshwa signed a new treaty, ostensibly complying with the demands of the British government[…]