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One child died, and the mother started with the other on the long drive to the nearest doctor. The last ten miles it was a dead child she held in her arms. When Boggley finished I was silent, remembering the little chintz-covered chair empty but for a broken doll. Now that I have tasted the joys of solitude I don't see how I am to enjoy living in a crowd again.
"Did she?" says Boggley. "She's a nice little woman; you'll like her." "She makes up," I say, "and she had on a most ridiculous hat. Mrs. Brodie says she's a dreadful flirt." "Rubbish!" says Boggley; "she's a very good sort and devoted to her husband." "Mrs. Brodie says," I continue, "that she is horrid to other women and tries to take away their husbands.
I want to see the native of India, not the fat babu; I want to live in tents and be a gipsy; I want to have Boggley all to myself. We have hardly time at present to pass the time of day with each other. Boggley tries to frighten me with tales of dak-bungalows and jungly cooking, but I won't be frightened; I am looking forward to it all too much.
I coveted it for years before I got it because it had pages like five-pound notes; I value it now for other reasons. Next the Bible is Q's Anthology of English Verse, its brave leather cover rather impaired by the fact that for two mornings Boggley, having mislaid his strop, has stropped his razor on it. Lastly comes my Shakespeare.
So I bundled in somehow, said a wistful good-bye to Boggley, and we started. I can't honestly say I like a doolie. I would rather have been my luggage and gone in the bullock-cart. Whichever way I lay I very soon got an ache in my back. The conduct, too, of the coolies filled me with uneasiness. They kept up a continued groaning.
Snobbery, sir, doth walk about the orb like the sun, it shines everywhere. A good lady talked to me quite seriously lately about what the Best People in Calcutta did. It has become a light table joke with us, and when I plant my elbows on the table and hum a tune while we are waiting for the next course at dinner, Boggley mildly inquires, "Do the Best People do that?"
In the East Indies the soldiers and Civil Servants of "John Company," and the merchant community, "shook the pagoda tree" until they had accumulated sufficient fortunes on which to retire, when they returned to England with yellow faces and torpid livers, grumbling like Jos Sedley to the ends of their lives about the cold, and the carelessness of English cooks in preparing curries, and harbouring unending regrets for the flesh-pots and comforts of life in Boggley Wollah, which in retrospect no doubt appeared more attractive than they had done in reality.
About twelve o'clock we had breakfast in the refreshment-room of a station. We had wired for it, so it was ready. First we got ham and eggs. The ham was evidently tinned, and the eggs were quite black. I poked my share suspiciously and asked what made it so black. "Pepper," said Boggley, who was eating away quite placidly. Pepper! As if I couldn't recognize plain dirt when I saw it.
But I have wandered miles away from Sunday morning in Darjeeling. It was still misty when we went out after breakfast, but not so solidly misty, so Boggley held out hopes it would clear. Darjeeling is a pretty place tucked into the mountain-side. In the middle is the bazaar, and it happened to be market day, which made it more interesting.
His duty it was to call upon old Sedley and his wife, and to keep the former in good humour: to draw Jos and his brother-in-law nearer together, so that Jos's position and dignity, as collector of Boggley Wollah, might compensate for his father's loss of station, and tend to reconcile old Osborne to the alliance: and finally, to communicate it to the latter in such a way as should least irritate the old gentleman.
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