ying my consuming hunger I managed to swallow a cup of
strong decoction with a couple of dry biscuits. When I at length reached
the drawing room I found a gathering of elderly ladies and among them
one pretty young American who was engaged to a nephew of my hostess and
seemed busy going through the usual premarital love passages.

"Let's have some dancing," said my hostess. I was neither in the mood
nor bodily condition for that exercise. But it is the docile who achieve
the most impossible things in this world; so, though the dance was
primarily got up for the benefit of the engaged couple, I had to dance
with the ladies of considerably advanced age, with only the tea and
biscuits between myself and starvation.

But my sorrows did not end here. "Where are you putting up for the
night?" asked my hostess. This was a question for which I was not
prepared. While I stared at her, speechless, she explained that as the
local inn would close at midnight I had better betake myself thither
without further delay. Hospitality, however, was not entirely wanting
for I had not to find the inn unaided, a servant showing me the way
there with a lantern. At first I thought this might prove a blessing in
disguise, and at once proceeded to make inquiries for food: flesh, fish
or vegetable, hot or cold, anything! I was told that drinks I could have
in any variety but nothing to eat. Then I looked to slumber for
forgetfulness, but there seemed to be no room even in her
world-embracing lap. The sand-stone floor of the bed-room was icy cold,
an old bedstead and worn-out wash-stand being its only furniture.

In the morning the Anglo-Indian widow sent for me to breakfast. I found
a cold repast spread out, evidently the remnants of last night's dinner.
A small portion of this, lukewarm or cold, offered to me last night
could not have hurt anyone, while my dancing might then have been less
like the agonised wrigglings of a landed carp.

After breakfast my hostess informed me that the lady for whose
delectation I had been invited to sing was ill in bed, and that I would
have to serenade her from her bed-room door. I was made to stand up on
the staircase landing. Pointing to a closed door the widow said: "That's
where she is." And I gave voice to that _Behaga_ dirge facing the
mysterious unknown on the other side. Of what happened to the invalid as
the result I have yet received no news.

After my return to London I had to expiate in bed the co