so."

"Do let me know how he is. Send me a _chit_ (letter) if you have time. I am
anxious to hear. Now I must thank you ever so much for your kindness in
looking after me on the journey. I don't know what I'd have done without
you."

"It was nothing. But you had better go. Your haughty friend is looking back
for you, angry that you should stop here talking to a native," he said
bitterly.

Ida was beckoning to her; even at that distance they could see that she was
impatient. So Noreen could only reiterate her thanks to the Hindu and hurry
after her friend, who said petulantly when she came up:

"I do wish you hadn't travelled up with that Indian, Noreen. It isn't nice
for an English girl to be seen with one, and it will make people talk. The
women here are such cats."

Noreen judged it best to make no reply, but followed her irate friend in
silence. Their _dandies_ were waiting outside the station, and as the girl
got into hers and was lifted up and carried off by the sturdy coolies on
whose shoulders the poles rested, she thought with a thrill of the last
occasion on which she had been borne in a chair.

CHAPTER XIII

THE PLEASURE COLONY

A town on the hill-tops; a town of clubs, churches, and hotels, of luxury
shops, of pretty villas set in lovely gardens bright with English flowers
and shaded by great orchid-clad trees; of broad, well-kept roads--such is
Darjeeling, seven thousand feet above the sea.

At first sight there is nothing Oriental about it except the Gurkha
policemen on point duty or the laughing groups of fair-skinned,
rosy-cheeked Lepcha women that go chattering by him. But on one side the
steep hills are crowded with the confused jumble of houses in the native
bazaar, built higgledy-piggledy one on top of the other and lining the
narrow streets and lanes that are thronged all day by a bright-garbed
medley of Eastern races--Sikkimese, Bhuttias, Hindus, Tibetans, Lepchas.
Set in a beautiful glen are the lovely Botanical Gardens, which look
down past slopes trimly planted with rows of tea-bushes into the deep
valleys far below.

As Noreen was borne along in her _dandy_ she thought that she had never
seen a more delightful spot. Everything and everyone attracted her
attention--the scenery, the buildings, the varied folk that passed her on
the road, from well set-up British soldiers in red coats and white helmets,
smartly-dressed ladies in rickshas, Englishmen in breeches and gaiters
ridin