expect us to stay with them. We meant to camp, but it will be much
pleasanter to stay with the Royles; everyone says they are charming
people.

Boggley and I went for a walk after tea to see the country. There
isn't much to see except a long, straight brown road and a most
insanitary-looking tank. The village is more interesting with its
queer booths. I do think it is an incongruous sight to see, as I
saw this afternoon, a native, naked but for a loin cloth, plying
a Singer's sewing-machine. The natives looked sullen and rather
suspicious, or is it only that I imagine it because they are so unlike
the broad-smiling Santals with their cheerful _johar_? There are four
trees before this bungalow, and at present two vultures are perching
on each--horrible creatures, with long, scraggy necks. I pointed them
out to Boggley, who was immediately reminded of a tale of a bumptious
young civilian, new to the country, who was told, by one who had
suffered many things at his hands, that the birds were wild turkeys, a
much-valued delicacy; hearing which the youth promptly shot some and
sent them round to the ladies of the station. Do you believe that
tale? I don't.

... We have just finished dinner--much the most amusing dinner I ever
ate. There is an intense rivalry, it seems, between our cook and the
engineer-man's cook; and although we dined together, our bills-of-fare
were kept jealously apart. Autolycus, of course, waited on us, and
when he handed me the fish, and I helped myself to one of the four
pieces, he said sternly, "Two, please," and I meekly took the other.
The engineer had no fish, but on the other hand he had an entrée which
was denied us. Both cooks rose to a savoury. (They _will_ give you
the savoury before the sweet. If you insist on anything else, it so