Viceroy for?" she said, opening her violet eyes innocently. "It's
Bungloore--First Turning to the Right--At the End of the passage."

Bungloore--near Ghouli Pass--in the Jungle! I knew the place, a spot
of dank pestilence and mystery. "You never could have gone there," I
said.

"You do not know WHAT I could do for a FRIEND," she said sweetly,
veiling her eyes in demure significance.

"Oh, come off the roof!" I said bluntly.

She could be obedient when it was necessary. She came off. Not
without her revenge. "Try to remember you are not at school with the
Stalkies," she said, and turned away.

I went to Bungloore,--not on her account, but my own. If you don't
know India, you won't know Bungloore. It's all that and more. An egg
dropped by a vulture, sat upon and addled by the Department. But I knew
the house and walked boldly in. A lion walked out of one door as I
came in at another. We did this two or three times--and found it
amusing. A large cobra in the hall rose up, bowed as I passed, and
respectfully removed his hood.

I found the poor old boy at the end of the passage. It might have been
the passage between Calais and Dover,--he looked so green, so limp and
dejected. I affected not to notice it, and threw myself in a chair.

He gazed at me for a moment and then said, "Did you hear what the chair
was saying?"

It was an ordinary bamboo armchair, and had creaked after the usual
fashion of bamboo chairs. I said so.

He cast his eyes to the ceiling. "He calls it 'creaking,'" he
murmured. "No matter," he continued aloud, "its remark was not of a
complimentary nature. It's very difficult to get really polite
furniture."

The man was evidently stark, staring mad. I still affected not to
observe it, and asked him if that was why he left Simla.

"There were Simla reasons, certainly," he replied. "But you think I
came here for solitude! SOLITUDE!" he repeated, with a laugh. "Why, I
hold daily conversations with any blessed thing in this house, from the
veranda to the chimney-stack, with any stick of furniture, from the
footstool to the towel-horse. I get more out of it than the gabble at
the Club. You look surprised. Listen! I took this thing up in my
leisure hours in the Department. I had read much about the
conversation of animals. I argued that if animals conversed, why
shouldn't inanimate things communicate with each other? You cannot
prove that animals don't converse--neither ca