How I do reminisce! It is entirely your fault for saying you liked it.
You know it is a trait in the Douglas family. Our way of entertaining
guests is to sit close together and recall happenings, and delightedly
remind each other of childish escapades, shouting hilariously, while
our guests sit in a bored and puzzled silence. Pleasant family the
Douglases!
Well, as I said, Rika is a pleasant place and the Royles Irish,
therefore charming. Mrs. Royle is a most purpose-like person. I like
to go with her in the morning on her rounds. Through the gardens we go
to see the bananas and pine-apples and tomatoes ripening in the sun,
and make sure that the _malis_ are doing their work; then on to the
wash-house, where the _dhobi_ is finishing the weekly wash; to the
kitchens, to see that the cooking-pots are clean; finally, to stand on
the verandah while the _syces_ bring the ponies and feed them before
our suspicious eyes. I forgot the henhouse. As we live almost entirely
on fowls in the Mofussil, the _moorghy-khana_ is a most important
feature of the establishment; but just now, I regret to say, owing to
a moorghy famine in the district, the stock is at a somewhat low ebb.
Men have been scouring the country for fowls, but when we went to look
at the result this morning we found about a dozen miserable chickens,
almost featherless, standing dejectedly in corners, and Mrs. Royle
wailed, "We can't kill these: it would be a sheer slaughter of the
innocents!" It isn't easy to get beef or mutton in this part of the
world, and when a sheep is brought to Rika it has to be carefully
concealed, or Kittiwake ties a ribbon round its neck and claims it as
her own, and terrible is the outcry if anyone dares to make away with
her pet.
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