tion with that function.

"Elma doesn't care for dinner-parties," Mrs. Macdonald said regretfully.

Elma was her daughter, and this was her first season in Simla.

"Oh, mother, I like the parties well enough!" said Elma. "What I hate is
the horrid way you have of getting to parties."

"What do you mean?" the third lady asked.

"Elma means that she doesn't like the jampans," Mrs. Macdonald
explained.

"I am always frightened," said Elma in a low voice, and a little of the
delicate colour she had brought out from England with her faded from her
lovely face. "It seems so dreadful to go rushing down those steep,
narrow lanes, on the edge of a precipice, in little rickety two-wheeled
chairs that would turn over in a minute if one of the men were to
stumble and fall; and then one would roll all down I don't know how many
feet, down those steep precipices: some of them have no railings or
protection of any kind, and in the evening the roads are quite dark
under the overhanging trees. And people have fallen over them and been
killed--every one knows that."

"Elma cannot speak Hindustani," the mother further explained, "and the
first time she went out she called '_Jeldi, jeldi!_' to the men, and of
course they ran faster and faster. I was really rather alarmed myself
when they came tearing past me round a corner."

"I thought _jeldi_ meant 'slowly,'" said Elma.

"Well, at any rate you have learnt one word of the language," said Mrs.
Thompson, laughing.

"I should not mind so much if mother was with me," said the girl; "but
those horrid little jampans only hold one person--and mother's jampannis
always run on so fast in front, and my men have to keep up with them. I
wish I wasn't going this evening."

"She has the sweetest frock you ever saw," said Mrs. Macdonald, turning
to a pleasanter aspect of the subject. "I must say my sister-in-law took
great pains with her outfit, and she certainly has excellent taste."

"Didn't you ever feel nervous at first," Elma asked, "when you went out
in a jampan on a dark night down a very steep road?"

Mrs. Thompson laughed. "I can't say I remember it," she said. "I never
fancied myself going over the _kudd_--the 'precipice' as you call it. I
suppose I should have made my husband walk by the side of the jampan if
I had been afraid."

Then she got up to go, and Mrs. Macdonald went out with her and stood
talking for a minute in the long corridor outside her rooms.

"She is a very