This morning Mrs. Royle took me to the village to get some brass to take home.  The shop was a little hut with an earthen floor, a pair of scales, and one shelf crowded with brass things, made, not for the European market, but for the daily use of the people, such as drinking-vessels—­lota is the pretty name—­and big brass plates out of which they eat their rice and dhalbat.  They keep them beautifully polished with sand, and I think they ought to be rather decorative; much more attractive certainly than the candlesticks and pots and cheap rough silver-work which is the usual loot carried away by the cold-weather visitor.

16th.

Another mail-day will soon be upon us; they simply pounce on one.  We have to get letters away by Tuesday from the Mofussil instead of Thursday as in Calcutta.  I look forward with great distaste to leaving this place next week.  When with the Royles one can’t imagine oneself happy anywhere else.  The days pass so quickly; breakfast seems hardly over when it is time for luncheon, and before one has really settled down to read or write it is four o’clock, and time to go to tea, which is spread down by the lake among the roses, the sun having lost its fierceness and begun to think of going to bed.  We all sit at a round table and eat brown bread and butter and jam, all home-made.  The china we use is very pretty and came from Ireland, but Mrs. Royle has been greatly troubled by its discoloured appearance, which the servants assured her there was no cure for.  I suggested rough salt and lemon-juice, and after tea yesterday afternoon they brought it, and we each set to work on our own cup and saucer, and behold! in a very short time they were like new.  Boggley made his particularly beautiful, but unfortunately broke it immediately afterwards, at which Kittiwake laughed so immoderately she fell on her saucer and sent it to its long home.

I have learned to take a most intelligent interest in fowls and Nietzsche; and more and more as the days pass do I like and admire our host and hostess.  I never met people I felt so affectionately towards.

Here come the children flying, followed patiently by the old khansamah with a spoon in one hand and a bottle of cod-liver-oil emulsion in the other.  I had better finish this letter and get the ink out of their reach.

Baratah, Thursday, Feb. 21.

...  Now we are really camping out, and I sit outside my tent even as Abraham did of old.  I have a whole long day before me to write.  Boggley was up and away long before I was awake, and won’t be back till evening.

We left Rika on Monday afternoon, very sad indeed.  Mrs. Royle, as is her way, heaped us with benefits, and, mindful of our starvation on the way to Rika, had a luncheon-basket packed with cold fowl, home-made bread, tomatoes, and a big cake.  As we drove off the children pursued us down the drive crying, “Don’t go away.  Stay with us always.”