“Camping out?” Lady Meadowcroft exclaimed, half roused from her languor by the idea of a change.  “Oh, do you think that would be fun?  Should we sleep on the ground?  But, wouldn’t it be dreadfully, horribly uncomfortable?”

“Not half so uncomfortable as you’ll find yourself here at Toloo in a few days, Emmie,” her husband put in, grimly.  “The rains will soon be on, lass; and when the rains are on, by all accounts, they’re precious heavy hereabouts—­rare fine rains, so that a man’s half-flooded out of his bed o’ nights—­which won’t suit you, my lady.”

The poor little woman clasped her twitching hands in feeble agony.  “Oh, Ivor, how dreadful!  Is it what they call the mongoose, or monsoon, or something?  But if they’re so bad here, surely they’ll be worse in the hills—­and camping out, too—­won’t they?”

“Not if you go the right way to work.  Ah’m told it never rains t’other side o’ the hills.  The mountains stop the clouds, and once you’re over, you’re safe enough.  Only, you must take care to keep well in the Maharajah’s territory.  Cross the frontier t’other side into Tibet, an’ they’ll skin thee alive as soon as look at thee.  They don’t like strangers in Tibet; prejudiced against them, somehow; they pretty well skinned that young chap Landor who tried to go there a year ago.”

“But, Ivor, I don’t want to be skinned alive!  I’m not an eel, please!”

“That’s all right, lass.  Leave that to me.  I can get thee a guide, a man that’s very well acquainted with the mountains.  I was talking to a scientific explorer here t’other day, and he knows of a good guide who can take you anywhere.  He’ll get you the chance of seeing the inside of a Buddhist monastery, if you like, Miss Wade.  He’s hand in glove with all the religion they’ve got in this part o’ the country.  They’ve got noan much, but at what there is, he’s a rare devout one.”

We discussed the matter fully for two or three days before we made up our minds.  Lady Meadowcroft was undecided between her hatred of dulness and her haunting fear that scorpions and snakes would intrude upon our tents and beds while we were camping.  In the end, however, the desire for change carried the day.  She decided to dodge the rainy season by getting behind the Himalayan-passes, in the dry region to the north of the great range, where rain seldom falls, the country being watered only by the melting of the snows on the high summits.

This decision delighted Hilda, who, since she came to India, had fallen a prey to the fashionable vice of amateur photography.  She took to it enthusiastically.  She had bought herself a first-rate camera of the latest scientific pattern at Bombay, and ever since had spent all her time and spoiled her pretty hands in “developing.”  She was also seized with a craze for Buddhism.  The objects that everywhere particularly attracted her were the old Buddhist temples and tombs and sculptures with which India is studded.  Of these she had taken some hundreds of views, all printed by herself with the greatest care and precision.  But in India, after all, Buddhism is a dead creed.  Its monuments alone remain; she was anxious to see the Buddhist religion in its living state; and that she could only do in these remote outlying Himalayan valleys.