And Ronald finished, "She has no English, for that reason she cries."

I am not the only visitor at Takai. There are two missionary ladies
here, resting after a strenuous time in some famine district. One is
tall and stout, the other is short and thin; both have drab-coloured
faces and straight mouse-coloured hair; both wear eye-glasses and sort
of up and down dresses--the very best of women one feels sure, but
oh! so difficult. You know my weakness for making people like me,
but these dear ladies will have none of me, charm I never so wisely.
Everything I do meets with their disapproval--how well I see it in
their averted, spectacled eyes! I talk too much, laugh too much, tell
foolish tales, mimic my elders and betters, and--worst sin of all--I
have never read, never even heard of, the _Missionary Magazine_.

Something you said in your last letter, some allusion to religion, I
didn't quite like, and at any other time I would have written you a
sermon on the subject. In Calcutta (where I felt so self-righteous)
nothing would have prevented me--but now I haven't the spirit. Mark,
please, how the whirligig of Time brings its revenges! In Calcutta I
thought myself a saint, in Takai I am regarded as a Brand Unplucked.
It is rather dispiriting. I am beginning to wonder if I really am as
nice as I thought I was.


_Takai, Jan. 22_.

This Gorgeous East is a cold and draughty place.

We have _chota-hazri_ in the verandah at 7.30, and at that early hour