oneself in the Park, if it had not been that now and again a strange
equipage would pass filled with natives, men and boys gorgeous in
purple and scarlet and gold, or closed carriages like boxes on wheels,
in which sat dark-skinned women demurely veiled. From the Red Road we
drove to the Strand, a carriage-way by the river where the great
ships lie, and watched the sun set and the spars and masts become
silhouetted against the red sky. Then darkness fell almost at once.

My mind was a chaos when I went to bed after my first day in India,
and I slept so soundly that when I woke I had no idea where I was. All
re-collections of the voyage and arrival were wiped from my memory and
I was filled first with vague astonishment and then with horror to
find myself surrounded by filmy white stuff through which peered a
black face. It was only my _ayah_, a quaint, small person, wrapped
in a white _sari_, with demure, sly eyes and teeth stained red with
chewing betel-nut, looking through the mosquito-curtains to see if the
Miss Sahib was awake and would like _chota-hazri_. She embarrasses
me greatly slipping about with her bare feet, appearing when I least
expect her or squatting on the floor staring at me fixedly. I know
no Hindustani and she knows perhaps three English words, so our
conversation is limited. The silence gets so on my nerves that I drop
hairbrushes and things to make a little disturbance, and it gives her
something to do to pick them up. I must at once learn some Hindustani
words such as pink, blue, and green, and then I shall be able to tell
Bella what dress to lay out, and her place won't be such a sinecure. I
call her Bella because it is the nearest I can get to her name and it
has a homely sound.

The rest of my impressions I shall keep for my next letter. I have
written this much to give you an idea of my surroundings, and you see