At the station we were told that the train was two hours late, and
Boggley thought it would be an excellent plan to spend the time
calling on the Blackies, who live near; so, leaving Autolycus and
the _chuprassis_ with the luggage, we set out. We had been shown the
flower-garden and a crocodile that Mr. Blackie had shot, and were
about to drink a dish of tea in the drawing-room, when we heard the
whistle of an engine. "The train!" cried Boggley, bounding to his
feet, and spurning the cup of tea Mrs. Blackie was offering to him. It
was no moment for ceremony. With a shrieked good-bye we leapt out of
the window and across the compound, and set off on our half-mile run
to the station. There is something peculiarly nasty about the nature
of Indian trains. Simply because we left the station it chose to be up
to time. It must have been an amusing incident to the people in the
station, but I would have enjoyed it more had I been one of the
natives watching from a third-class carriage instead of, so to speak,
one of the principal actors. There was the engine shrieking in its
anxiety to start; there was our luggage neatly spread all over an
empty compartment; there was Autolycus protesting shrilly that the
train could not leave without his sahib, who was a very _burra_ sahib;
and finally there _we_ were with scarlet faces, topis on the backs of
our heads, surrounded by a thick cloud of dust, careering wildly into
the station.

After all the fuss, we had only about thirty miles to travel, when
we got out and drove three miles in a kind of native cart to a
dâk-bungalow, a very poor and uncomfortable specimen of its kind. It
didn't uplift us to hear that plague was very bad all round, and after
a somewhat jungly dinner during which we were very thoughtful and
disinclined for conversation, we sought our mildewed couches, to rise