one, as Boggley is away
inspecting before seven o'clock. I emerge from my tent and find a
table before Boggley's tent with a cloth on it,--not particularly
clean,--a loaf of bread (our bread is made in jail: a _chuprassi_ goes
to fetch it every second day), a tin of butter, and a tin of jam.
Autolycus appears accompanied by the jungly cook, bearing a plate of
what under happier circumstances might have been porridge. A spoonful
or two is more than enough. "No good?" demands Autolycus. "No," and
disdainfully handing the plate back to the entirely indifferent cook,
he proceeds to produce from somewhere about his person a teapot and
two tiny eggs. Luncheon is much worse, for the food that appears is
so incalculably greasy that it argues a more than bowing acquaintance
with native _ghee_. Dinner is luncheon intensified, so tea is really
the only thing we can enjoy. The fact is, if we thought about it we
would never eat at all. I happened to walk round the tent to-day, and
found the dish-washer washing our dishes in water that was positively
thick, and drying them with a cloth that had begun life polishing our
brown boots. I stormed at him in English, and later Boggley stormed
at him in Hindustani, and he vowed it would never happen again; but
I dare say if I were to look round at this minute, I should find him
doing exactly the same thing; and I don't really care so long as
neither of us perishes with cholera as a result.

Such funny things live behind my tent! What should I find the other
day but a little native baby--about two or three years old. It seems
his mother is dead, and his father, who is our _chokidar_, has to take
him with him wherever he goes. He is the oddest little figure, clothed
in a most inadequate shirt, and a string round his neck with a shell
attached to keep away evil spirits. His hair is closely shaved except
for one upstanding tuft which is left to pull him up to heaven with;
and his face looks nothing but two great twinkling eyes. He squats
beside me nearly all day, and eagerly eats anything I give him, like a
little puppy dog. Toffee and fancy biscuits, both of which I possess
in abundance, are his favourites. An old servant of Boggley's is with
a sahib near here, and he arrived dressed in spotless white from
head to foot, bearing in one hand a large seed cake wreathed with
marigolds, and in the other a plate of toffee coloured pink, green,
and yellow, an offering to the Miss Sahib which he presen