at that.

"Pardon me," said I in English, "I believed you a countryman, and
ventured to address you in my native tongue. May I inquire whether you
speak English?"

I was not a little astonished when he answered me in pure English, and
with an evident command of the language. We fell into conversation, and
I found him pungent, ready, impressive, and most entertaining,
thoroughly acquainted with Anglo-Indian and English topics, and
apparently well read. An Indian dinner is a long affair, so that we had
ample time to break the ice, an easy matter always for people who are
not English, and when, after the fruit, he invited me to come down and
smoke with him in his rooms, I gladly availed myself of the opportunity.
We separated for a few moments, and I despatched my servant to the
manager of the hotel to ascertain the name of the strange gentleman who
looked like an Italian and spoke like a fellow of Balliol. Having
discovered that he was a "Mr. Isaacs," I wended my way through verandahs
and corridors, preceded by a _chuprassie_ and followed by my
pipe-bearer, till I came to his rooms.

The fashion of the hookah or narghyle in India has long disappeared from
the English portion of society. Its place has been assumed and usurped
by the cheroot from Burmah or Trichinopoli, by the cigarette from Egypt,
or the more expensive Manilla and Havana cigars. I, however, in an early
burst of Oriental enthusiasm, had ventured upon the obsolete fashion,
and so charmed was I by the indolent aromatic enjoyment I got from the
rather cumbrous machine, that I never gave it up while in the East. So
when Mr. Isaacs invited me to come and smoke in his rooms, or rather
before his rooms, for the September air was still warm in the hills, I
ordered my "bearer" to bring down the apparatus and to prepare it for
use. I myself passed through the glass door in accordance with my new
acquaintance's invitation, curious to see the kind of abode in which a
man who struck me as being so unlike his fellows spent his summer
months. For some minutes after I entered I did not speak, and indeed I
hardly breathed. It seemed to me that I was suddenly transported into
the subterranean chambers whither the wicked magician sent Aladdin in
quest of the lamp. A soft but strong light filled the room, though I did
not immediately comprehend whence it came, nor did I think to look, so
amazed was I by the extraordinary splendour of the objects that met my
eyes. In the fir