The special Providence that looks after casual people has guided
Boggley to quite a nice house in a nice part of the town. Many
Government people who are in Calcutta only for the cold weather--I
mean those of them who are burdened not with wealth but
women-folk--find it cheaper and more convenient to live in a
boarding-house. Does that conjure up to you a vision of Bloomsbury,
and tall grey houses, and dirty maid-servants, and the Passing of
Third Floor Backs? It isn't one bit like that. This boarding-house
consists, oddly enough, of four big houses all standing a little
distance apart in a compound. They are let out in suites of rooms, and
the occupants can either all feed together in the public dining-room
or in lonely splendour in their own apartments. We have five rooms on
the ground floor. Of the two sitting-rooms one is almost quite dark,
and is inhabited by a suite of furniture, three marble-topped tables
on which Boggley had set out the few photographs and trifles which he
hasn't yet lost, and a sad-looking cabinet; the other opens into
the garden, and is a nice cheerful room. The dark room we have made
Boggley's study; as he only uses it at night, it doesn't matter about
the want of light, and there is a fine large writing-table which holds
stacks of papers. We got the marble-topped tables carried into the
cheery room and covered them with tablecloths from a shop in Park
Street, bought rugs for the floor and hangings for the doors, and with
a few cushions and palms and flowers the room is quite pretty and
home-like.
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