scapades, shouting hilariously, while
our guests sit in a bored and puzzled silence. Pleasant family the
Douglases!

Well, as I said, Rika is a pleasant place and the Royles Irish,
therefore charming. Mrs. Royle is a most purpose-like person. I like
to go with her in the morning on her rounds. Through the gardens we go
to see the bananas and pine-apples and tomatoes ripening in the sun,
and make sure that the _malis_ are doing their work; then on to the
wash-house, where the _dhobi_ is finishing the weekly wash; to the
kitchens, to see that the cooking-pots are clean; finally, to stand on
the verandah while the _syces_ bring the ponies and feed them before
our suspicious eyes. I forgot the henhouse. As we live almost entirely
on fowls in the Mofussil, the _moorghy-khana_ is a most important
feature of the establishment; but just now, I regret to say, owing to
a moorghy famine in the district, the stock is at a somewhat low ebb.
Men have been scouring the country for fowls, but when we went to look
at the result this morning we found about a dozen miserable chickens,
almost featherless, standing dejectedly in corners, and Mrs. Royle
wailed, "We can't kill these: it would be a sheer slaughter of the
innocents!" It isn't easy to get beef or mutton in this part of the
world, and when a sheep is brought to Rika it has to be carefully
concealed, or Kittiwake ties a ribbon round its neck and claims it as
her own, and terrible is the outcry if anyone dares to make away with
her pet.

There are two Royle children--Kittiwake and Hilda. Kittiwake
(christened, I believe, Kathleen Helen) is fat and broad and beaming,
and very religious. Hilda is inclined to love the gay world, and finds
Rika too quiet--the baby aged six! They are both thorough little
sportsmen and mounted on their ponies go with their father almost
everywhere. Yesterday I went for a ride with them, along dusty brown
roads between rice-fields, and they gave me a wonderful lot of
information about the place and the people. As we passed a little
village temple Kittiwake stopped. "_That_," she said solemnly,
pointing with her whip, "is where they worship false gods."

I told Mr. Royle about Peter being so anxious for a mongoose, and
to-day when the children came running to beg me to come quickly and
see what the fisherman had caught for me, my mind leapt at once to
mongooses. When I saw, confined under a wicker basket, two animals
with yellow fur and flat heads that