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They had both discarded their tunics in favour of what they called blouses, loose holland garments like long Norfolk jackets, and Gerrard had exchanged his cap for a hat of white feathers lined with green, the precursor of the sun-helmet. "Good job we ain't in Khemistan. Old Harry Lennox would have court-martialled us like winkin'," said Charteris.
The sloping black mitre of a stout Parsee merchant, accompanied by a pretty daughter in white head-band and floating sari of cherry-coloured silk, varies the motley headgear of turban and fez, straw hat and sun-helmet, worn by this cosmopolitan population, the pink headkerchiefs, tinselled scarves, and jewelled buttons of the beautiful Burmese dress, drawing attention to the energetic bargaining of two astute customers for cooking utensils; these elegantly-attired but mahogany-coloured dames, rivalling the Sumatran women in business capacity, and equally determined on securing the quid pro quo.
Straitened circumstances would not have mattered; a mother would have managed somehow. In the '80s such a dress would have indicated considerable financial means; under the sun-helmet it was an anachronism; and yet it served only to add a quainter charm to the girl's beauty. "Do you know what you make me think of?" "What?" "As if you had stepped out of some old family album."
Mrs. Norton looked contentedly at her image in the long mirror which reflected a graceful figure in a well-cut grey habit and smart long brown boots, a pretty face and wavy auburn hair under the sun-helmet.
"It doesn't matter," Dion murmured, standing with his hands on the ladder. "You know their language." Rosamund was sitting now, half-curled up, with her back against the brushwood wall. Her light sun-helmet lay on the floor. In her ruffled hair were caught two or three thin brown leaves, their brittle edges curled inwards.
Guy Oscard was still in his pyjamas, which he had tucked into top-boots. He also wore a sun-helmet, which added a finish to his costume. They got quite accustomed to this get-up during the next three days, for he never had time to change it; and, somehow, it ceased to be humorous long before the end of that time. "Oh, it's nothing," Durnovo was saying, with a singular eagerness.
"No; there are the trees," said Raymond. "It's extraordinary. The whole tank seems to have shifted." The Resident was mopping his bald scalp and lifted his hat to let the gusty wind cool his head. A sudden squall blew the big pith sun-helmet out of his hand. Wargrave caught it in the air and returned it to its owner. "By Jove! it's a regular gale," he said. "I think I know what's happened.
Almost on the stroke of sunrise Rosemary McClean stepped out settled her sun-helmet, with a moue above the chin-strap that was wasted on flat-bosomed, black grandmotherdom and sulky groom and mounted. She needed no help.
Joyce sponged his head with cold water, drank a cup of strong coffee, put on an imposing official tarboosh instead of his sun-helmet, and formed himself into a court of inquiry and judgment under the acacia tree. He would have liked his people to have seen him now, with his two black orderlies in waiting, and his Egyptian native officer at his side.
He still looked exhausted and walked with some difficulty, but he had washed the sand from his face with water from the artesian well behind the tower, changed his uniform, brushed the sand from his yellow hair, and put on a smart gold-laced cap instead of his sun-helmet.
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