CHAPTER XVIII
LAHORE
VEN the Delhi bullocks were blanketed the day we left for Lahore and the farther, colder Northwest. We had bought more and more razais as we went up-country, until the bichauna, or rolls of traveling bedding, would barely pass through a car door, and, finally, yards of heavy pashmina cloth to wind around us in makeshift Indian fashion. The memorial Mutiny cross, standing high on the Ridge, was the last seen of Delhi; and there followed a few wayside stations with shivering platform groups, an uninteresting sunset over a dusty, barren plain; dinner at Saharanpur, and merciful darkness, while we jolted on until five o'clock in the morning.
It was dark night when we were whirled through Lahore's frosty streets, to find warm rooms with real coal fires in open grates. We reappeared with the latest British breakfasters at the long table d'hôte, and in the city of his youth we found a whole table full of Kipling characters—English army people and civil servants. We could almost call them all by name, and life at that hotel was a continuous
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