my head on the roof as I did so, to find that the carriage door was swinging wide open.  What was to be done?  I carefully felt the bumps beginning to rise on my forehead, and considered.  It was, humanly speaking, impossible that I could descend and shut that door, and yet, could I endure lying inadequately covered and exposed to all the winds of heaven?  There remained my fellow-travellers—­they at least were on the first floor, so to speak; but as I wavered a striking apparition rose, stalked down the carriage, and, leaning far out into the night, seized the door and shut it with a bang.  Then arose a shrill protest from beneath me:  “Oh, Mommer, how could you be so careless!  You might have fallen out, and I should have been left quite alone in this awful heathen country!”

After that there was no more sleep, and when daylight came filtering through the shutters I slid warily to the floor, and having washed and dressed, sat on my dressing-bag and conversed amiably with the Americans.  I found them charming and most entertaining, simple, quiet people; not the shrill-voiced tourist jat at all.  They had been travelling, so they told me, with a sort of dreary satisfaction, for two years, and they had still about a year to do.  It sounded like hard labour!  The poor dears!  I can’t think why they did it.  They would have been so much happier at home in their own little corner of the world.  I can picture them attending sewing bees, and other quaint things people do attend in old-fashioned New England storybooks.  They had a servant with them whom they addressed as Ali, a bearded rascal who evidently cheated them at every turn, and who actually came into their presence with his shoes on!

I didn’t know till I met these Americans that I was such a wit—­or perhaps wag is a better word.  I didn’t try to be funny, I didn’t even know I was being funny, but every word I said convulsed them.

The “Mommer” said to me: 

“Child, are you married?”

“No,” I said, surprised.  “Why?”

“I was just thinking what a good time your husband must have!”

When we reached Siliguri I was surprised to find everything glistening with frost, and the few natives who were about had their heads wrapped up in shawls as if they were suffering from toothache.  We got some breakfast in the waiting-room, and then took our places in the funniest little toy train.  This is the Darjeeling-Himalaya Railway.  It was all very primitive.  A man banged with a stick on a piece of metal by way of a starting-bell, and we set off on our journey to cloudland.

Eagerly looked for, Darjeeling came at last, but alack! no mountains, only piled-up banks of white clouds.  It was bitterly cold, and we were glad to get out and stamp up to the hotel, where we found great fires burning in our rooms.

There wasn’t much to do in the hotel beyond reading back numbers of The Lady’s Pictorial, and I went to bed on Saturday night rather low in my mind, fearing, after all, I was not to be accounted worthy to behold the mountains.