More meme fun

I've actually done this meme I think twice before, but I love doing it, so I don't mind doing it again!

Open the book closest to you at the moment and turn to page 56. Write out the 5th sentence as well as 2 to 5 sentences following.

The closest book to hand is the one I'm currently reading, MM Kaye's The Far Pavilions. It's a wonderful epic, novel. At over 900 pages, it tends to be long-winded, but I love books like that, if the plot is engrossing enough. The Far Pavilions is that kind of book. I have to cheat here a bit, since page 56 is hanging text at the end of a chapter. So I'll turn to the page before...

"When I am head-syce," said Ash grandly, "we will move to a big house and have a servant to do the cooking, and you will never have to do any more work, Mata-ji."

It is just possible that he might have carried out his plan and spent his days attached to the stable of some petty nobleman. For as soon as it became apparent that he could ride anything on four legs, Mohammed Sharif , recognizing a born horseman, had permitted him to exercise his charges and taught him many valuable secrets of horsemanship, so that the year he spent in Duni Chand's stables had been a very happy one. But fate, with a certain amount of human assistance, had other plans for Ash; and the fall of a weather-worn slab of sandstone was to change the whole course of his life.