Calcutta to the Northwest. These bungalows are objectionable
places to put up in. They are generally very old, always dirty,
while the _khansamah_ is as ancient as the bungalow. He either
chatters senilely, or falls into the long trances of age. In both
moods he is useless. If you get angry with him, he refers to some
Sahib dead and buried these thirty years, and says that when he
was in that Sahib's service not a _khansamah_ in the Province could
touch him. Then he jabbers and mows and trembles and fidgets
among the dishes, and you repent of your irritation.

In these dâk-bungalows, ghosts are most likely to be found, and
when found, they should be made a note of. Not long ago it was
my business to live in dâk-bungalows. I never inhabited the same
house for three nights running, and grew to be learned in the breed.
I lived in Government-built ones with red brick walls and rail
ceilings, an inventory of the furniture posted in every room, and an
excited snake at the threshold to give welcome. I lived in
"converted" ones--old houses officiating as dâk-bungalows--where
nothing was in its proper place and there wasn't even a fowl for
dinner. I lived in second-hand palaces where the wind blew
through open-work marble tracery just as uncomfortably as
through a broken pane. I lived in dâk-bungalows where the last
entry in the visitors' book was fifteen months old, and where they
slashed off the curry-kid's head with a sword. It was my good luck
to meet all sorts of men, from sober traveling missionaries and
deserters flying from British Regiments, to drunken loafers who
threw whisky bottles at all who passed; and my still greater good
fortune just to escape a maternity case. Seeing that a fair
proportion of the tragedy of our lives out here acted itself in
dâk-bungalows, I wondered that I had met no ghosts. A ghost that