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It is wonderful where a bicycle can go in India. I was much sorrier to leave Takai than I thought I should be, and I think they were a little sorry to see me go. Even the missionary ladies unbent so far as to say they would miss my bright face and merry chatter. How differently people describe things!
Takai, Jan. 22. This Gorgeous East is a cold and draughty place. We have chota-hazri in the verandah at 7.30, and at that early hour it is so cold my blue fingers will hardly lift the cup. Now the sun is beginning to warm things into life again, and I have been sitting outside basking in its rays, to the anxiety of Mrs.
The Takai drawing-room was delightful, a big, rather empty room, with one or two good reproductions of famous pictures on the walls, heaps of books, and an almost entire absence of ornaments rather an ascetic room. It suited the simple, strenuous life there. Mrs.
I am enjoying myself at Takai. As the man said when he lost his wife, "It's verra quiet but verra peacefu'." After Calcutta, the quiet does seem almost uncanny. It is a blameless existence one leads. I think I would soon grow very good, for there is no temptation to be anything else.
Your letters are the greatest comfort to me; indeed, I can't imagine what it would be like without them. I must finish this up, for the mail goes to-morrow. My time here is nearly run. I hear from Boggley that he expects to arrive to-morrow, and we depart together the next day. I shall be sorry and glad both. Sorry to leave Takai and the dear people, more than glad to be with Boggley.
It was too great an undertaking for the natives with their poor tools it would take them a week, but the sailors could do it in half a day. Old Takai wanted the tree cut down so as to build a large canoe. The poor captain fell into the trap, the interpreter assuring him that the natives would not dream of attempting any mischief.
Picture to yourself Boggley and me setting out "with a little hoard of Maxims." Armed, I should be a menace alike to friend and foe! My first stopping-place is Takai. Boggley is going to some very far-away place where it wouldn't be convenient to take a female, so when Dr. and Mrs. Russel asked me to come to them while he is there I very gladly accepted the invitation. Dr.
Bright and merry are hardly the adjectives I should have applied to my soulful countenance and brilliant conversation; but no matter. They all stood on the verandah to watch us go. Mrs. Russel, dear woman, was obviously sincerely sorry for anyone leaving such a delectable spot as Takai; and indeed there are many worse places. The boys grinned benignly, each hopping on one foot.
This letter must begin in pencil, for Boggley has the only pen. By the bye, would you mind keeping my letters till I get home? I think it might be amusing to read them when my cold weather in India is a thing of the past. Behold us on the first stage of our wanderings! We left Takai on Wednesday, I in my old friend the doolie, Boggley on his bicycle.
Russel being Scots, knows how to give a proper tea, with plates, and knives, and scones, and jam; and I am as greedy as a schoolboy over it. Yesterday there was no milk such a blow. The cows had wandered into a man's land, and he, as the custom is, marched them into the pound five miles away, and there we were milkless! The country round Takai is quite pretty almost like Scots moorland.
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