race of style. I read
somewhere lately that young writers use too many adjectives, that good
writers depend more on verbs. It has made me rather nervous and I keep
counting both, but a certain dubiety in my own mind as to which is
which greatly complicates matters. My heroine, too, is a failure, I
like her name--Belinda--but it is the only thing I like about her.
What is the good of me laboriously writing down that she is beautiful
and charming when I am convinced in my own mind she is nothing of the
kind? However, I mean to persevere....

We all meet at tea--the nicest time of the day I think. My friend
Katie says the world isn't properly warmed up till five o'clock, and
certainly there is a feeling of comfort all over everything at the
clink of the teacups. Mrs. Russel being Scots, knows how to give a
proper tea, with plates, and knives, and scones, and jam; and I am as
greedy as a schoolboy over it. Yesterday there was no milk--such a
blow. The cows had wandered into a man's land, and he, as the custom
is, marched them into the pound five miles away, and there we
were--milkless!

The country round Takai is quite pretty--almost like Scots moorland.
Yesterday we went for a picnic to a river at the opening of a pass--a
most interesting place where not very long ago a native boy had been
eaten by a tiger. You see, picnics in the jungle are not quite the
insipid things they are at home! There is always the chance that the
unwary may be devoured. Actually we did see yesterday the footprints
of a tiger in the sand by the river--pugs I think is the proper
expression. I was scared, but Robert advanced boldly into the bushes.
Ronald, watching him admiringly, said, "He is very brave; he is as
brave as Daniel."

Talking about tigers, they aren't nearly as prevalent as I thought. I
had an idea they were prowling all over India waiting to spring, but
one man told me he had been in India fifteen years and had never seen
one. Boggley came on one once and took it for a cow--short-sighted
Boggley! Dr. Russel says there was a man-eating tiger in the district
lately, and a reward was offered for its capture. A young engineer
sallied forth to slay. He directed the natives to dig a pit near where
the tiger was known to be and cover it with branches, and the next day
went and found it had walked into the trap. The natives removed the
branches, the gallant engineer approached, but they had dug the pit on
a slope, and the tiger _came wal