Miss Aitken had been a beauty, and liked to tell us of the balls she had danced at, when, dressed in white muslin with heelless slippers and a wreath in her hair, she had been called “a sylph,” Why she had never married was a puzzle to many.  I remember she used to tell us of a wonderful visit to London, and of how she came home sick at heart about leaving all the “ferlies,” as she called them.  On her first evening at home Miss Elspeth had said, to cheer her, “Come and see the wee pigs.”  “Me!” said poor Miss Aitken.  “What did I care about the wee pigs!” It was, perhaps, more than the “ferlies” she missed, but I don’t know.  She was no sylph when I knew her, my dear Miss Aitken, but she had a most comfortable lap, and a cap with cherry ribbons, and the kindest heart in all the world.  Once, John, who thirsted always for information, and mindful of a point that had struck him in the chapter at morning prayers, said: 

“Miss Aitken, are you any relation to Achan-in-the-Camp?”

Miss Elspeth, looking quizzically at her sister, answered for her:  “Dod!  Marget, I wouldna wonder but what ye micht hae been tempted by the Babylonish garment!”

They were very old when we knew them, these dear ladies, and they have been dead many years, but their simple, kindly lives have left a fragrance to sweeten this workaday world even as the mignonette in bygone summers scented their old-world garden.

How I do reminisce!  It is entirely your fault for saying you liked it.  You know it is a trait in the Douglas family.  Our way of entertaining guests is to sit close together and recall happenings, and delightedly remind each other of childish escapades, shouting hilariously, while our guests sit in a bored and puzzled silence.  Pleasant family the Douglases!

Well, as I said, Rika is a pleasant place and the Royles Irish, therefore charming.  Mrs. Royle is a most purpose-like person.  I like to go with her in the morning on her rounds.  Through the gardens we go to see the bananas and pine-apples and tomatoes ripening in the sun, and make sure that the malis are doing their work; then on to the wash-house, where the dhobi is finishing the weekly wash; to the kitchens, to see that the cooking-pots are clean; finally, to stand on the verandah while the syces bring the ponies and feed them before our suspicious eyes.  I forgot the henhouse.  As we live almost entirely on fowls in the Mofussil, the moorghy-khana is a most important feature of the establishment; but just now, I regret to say, owing to a moorghy famine in the district, the stock is at a somewhat low ebb.  Men have been scouring the country for fowls, but when we went to look at the result this morning we found about a dozen miserable chickens, almost featherless, standing dejectedly in corners, and Mrs. Royle wailed, “We can’t kill these:  it would be a sheer slaughter of the innocents!” It isn’t easy to get beef or mutton in this part of the world, and when a sheep is brought to Rika it has to be carefully concealed, or Kittiwake ties a ribbon round its neck and claims it as her own, and terrible is the outcry if anyone dares to make away with her pet.