In Colombo we got rickshaws and drove out to the Galle Face Hotel, a beautiful place with the surf thundering on the beach outside.  If I were rich I would always ride in a rickshaw.  It is a delightful way of getting about, and as we were trotted along a fine broad road, small brown boys ran alongside and pelted us with big waxy, sweet-smelling blossoms.  We did enjoy it so.  At the Galle Face, in a cool and lofty dining-hall, we had an excellent and varied breakfast, and ate real proper Eastern curry for the first time.  Another new experience!  I don’t like curry at home, curry as English cooks know it—­a greasy make-up of cold joint served with sodden rice; but this was different.  First, rice was handed round, every particle firm and separate and white, and then a rich brown mixture with prawns and other interesting ingredients, which was the curry.  You mix the curry with the rice, when a whole trayful of condiments is offered to eat with it, things like very thin water biscuits, Bombay duck—­all sorts of chutney, and when you have mixed everything up together the result is one of the nicest dishes it has been my lot to taste.  Note also, you eat it with a fork and spoon, not with a fork alone as mere provincials do!

I begin to feel so excited about seeing Boggley.  It is two years since he was home last.  Will he have changed much, I wonder?  There was a letter from him at Colombo, and he hadn’t left Darjeeling and had no house to take me to in Calcutta, so it would appear that when I do land my lodging will be the cold ground.  It sounds as if he were still the same casual old Boggley.  Who began that name?  John, I think.  He had two names for him—­“Lo-the-poor-Indian” and “Boggley-Wallah”—­and in time we all slipped into calling him Boggley.  I like to think you two men were such friends at Oxford.  Long before I knew you I had heard many tales of your doings, and I think that was one reason why, when we did meet, we liked each other and became friends, because we were both so fond of Boggley.  I am filled with qualms as to whether he will be glad to see me.  It must be rather a nuisance in lots of ways to have a sister to look after, but he was so keen that I should come that surely he won’t think me a bother.  Besides, when you think of it, it was really very good of me to leave my home and all my friends and brave the perils of the deep, to visit a brother in exile.

I wish I knew exactly when we shall arrive; this suspense is wearing.  One man told me we would be in on Wednesday, another said we would miss the tide and not be in till Saturday.  I asked the captain, but he directed me to the barber, who, he said, knew everything—­and indeed there are very few things he doesn’t know.  He is a dignified figure with a shiny curl on his forehead, and a rich Cockney accent, full of information, generally, I must admit, strikingly inaccurate, but bestowed with such an air.  “I do believe him though I know he lies.”