e turned back then and there at
the station.

The journey up country was uneventful, but dusty. The Mofussil appears
to consist mainly of dust; indeed, I can now recall nothing of it but
one pervading white cloud, which has blotted from my memory all its
other components. The dust clung to my hair after many washings, and was
never really beaten out of my travelling clothes; I believe part of it
thus went round the world with me to England. When at last we reached
Moozuffernuggar, after two days' and a night's hard travelling, we were
met by a crowd of local grandees, who looked as if they had spent the
greater part of their lives in brushing back their whiskers, and we
drove up at once, in European carriages, to the Maharajah's palace. The
look of it astonished me. It was a strange and rambling old Hindoo
hill-fort, high perched on a scarped crag, like Edinburgh Castle, and
accessible only on one side, up a gigantic staircase, guarded on either
hand by huge sculptured elephants cut in the living sandstone. Below
clustered the town, an intricate mass of tangled alleys. I had never
seen anything so picturesque or so dirty in my life; as for Elsie, she
was divided between admiration for its beauty and terror at the
big-whiskered and white-turbaned attendants.

'What sort of rooms shall we have?' I whispered to our moral guarantee,
Mrs. Balmossie.

'Oh, beautiful, dear,' the little lady smirked back. 'Furnished
throughout--he, he, he--by Liberty. The Maharajah wants to do honour to
his European guests--he, he, he--he fancies, poor man, he's quite
European. That's what comes of sending these creatures to Oxford! So
he's had suites of rooms furnished for any white visitors who may chance
to come his way. Ridiculous, isn't it? _And_ champagne--oh, gallons of
it! He's quite proud of his rooms, he, he, he--he's always asking people
to come and occupy them; he thinks he's done them up in the best style
of decoration.'

He had reason, for they were as tasteful as they were dainty and
comfortable. And I could not for the life of me make out why his
hospitable inclination should be voted 'ridiculous.' But Mrs. Balmossie
appeared to find all natives alike a huge joke together. She never even
spoke of them without a condescending smile of distant compassion.
Indeed, most Anglo-Indians seem first to do their best to Anglicise the
Hindoo, and then to laugh at him for aping the Englishman.

After we had been three days at the pala