not marvellous? They stand like a rampart round us, but not cold
and terrible, but "Like as the hills stand round about Jerusalem"
- they are guardian presences. And running up into them, high
-very high, are the valleys and hills where we shall camp.
Tomorrow we shall row through Srinagar, by the old Maharaja's
palace."



V

And so began a life of sheer enchantment. We knew no one. The
visitors in Kashmir change nearly every season, and no one
cared-no one asked anything of us, and as for our shipmates, a
willing affectionate service was their gift, and no more. Looking
back, I know in what a wonder-world I was privileged to live.
Vanna could talk with them all. She did not move apart, a
condescending or indifferent foreigner. Kahdra would come to her
knee and prattle to her of the great snake that lived up on
Mahadeo to devour erring boys who omitted their prayers at proper
Moslem intervals. She would sit with the baby in her lap while
the mother busied herself in the sunny bows with the mysterious
dishes that smelt so savory to a hungry man. The cuts, the
bruises of the neighbourhood all came to Vanna for treatment.

"I am graduating as a nurse," she would say laughing as she bent
over the lean arm of some weirdly wrinkled old lady, bandaging
and soothing at the same moment. Her reward would be some bit of
folk-lore, some quaintness of gratitude that I noted down in the
little book I kept for remembrance - that I do not need, for