d dolefully that he was travelling for pleasure,
which simple explanation offended the little man with the courier-bag.
He snapped his joints more excruciatingly than ever: "For pleasure? My
God! For pleasure? Come here an' wait five weeks for your money, an',
mark what I'm tellin' you now, you don't get it then! But per'aps your
ideas of pleasure is different from most people's. For pleasure! Yah!"
He skipped across the sands toward the station, for he was going back
with the down train, and vanished in a whirlwind of luggage and the
fluttering of female skirts: in Jodhpur the women are baggage coolies. A
level, drawling voice spoke from an inner room: "'E's a bit upset.
That's what 'e is! I remember when I was at Gworlior"--the rest of the
story was lost, and the Englishman set to work to discover the nakedness
of the dak-bungalow. For reasons which do not concern the public, it is
made as bitterly uncomfortable as possible. The food is infamous, and
the charges seem to be wilfully pitched about eighty per cent above the
tariff, so that some portion of the bill, at least, may be paid without
bloodshed, or the unseemly defilement of walls with the contents of
drinking glasses. This is short-sighted policy, and it would, perhaps,
be better to lower the prices and hide the tariff, and put a guard about
the house to prevent jackal-molested donkeys from stampeding into the
verandahs. But these be details. Jodhpur dak-bungalow is a merry, merry
place, and any writer in search of new ground to locate a madly
improbable story in, could not do better than study it diligently. In
front lies sand, riddled with innumerable ant-holes, and beyond the sand
the red sandstone wall of the city, and the Mahometan burying-ground
that fringes it. Fragments of sandstone set on end mark the resting
places of the Faithful, who are of no great account here. Above
everything, a mark for miles around, towers the dun-red pile of the Fort
which is also a Palace. This is set upon sandstone rock whose sharper
features have been worn smooth by the wash of the windblown sand. It is
as monstrous as anything in Dore's illustrations of the _Contes
Drolatiques_ and, wherever it wanders, the eye comes back at last to its
fantastic bulk. There is no greenery on the rock, nothing but fierce
sunlight or black shadow. A line of red hills forms the background of
the city, and this is as bare as the picked bones of camels that lie
bleaching on the sand below.