household goods and chattels. And when a native camps out it isn't very clean just round about there for some time afterwards.
We reached Slumpanugger without any further adventures, though Ermyntrude of course found much to disapprove of. What she complained about most bitterly was the way they rushed her through her meals. Now the gods have seen fit to endow Ermyntrude with a sound and healthy appetite and unsound teeth. It's a bad combination at the best of times, but when you're pressed for time it's doubly to be regretted. If you don't happen to be blessed with a dining-car on board the train—which you only seem to be on the main lines on the express trains in India—you have to get out and gobble what you can in the briefest space of time in a wayside station refreshment-room. But as every train in India is invariably late, and they don't seem to feed the guard and driver at the same places they feed you at, you generally get whisked away long before you've worked through the menu. So Ermyntrude, who eats slowly and was always served last, fared almost as badly as the fox at the stork's dinner-party. The crowning injury was that she never reached the curry stage once throughout the journey.
'And I'd taken such a fancy to the curry, miss,' she said pathetically, as we were whisked away from the last refreshment-room by an excited guard just as the curry appeared.
'Well, never mind,' I replied consolingly, 'you'll get plenty of it during the next few months.'
