hunt for green slippers with seed-pearl toes, for Peshawar shoes woven of strips of leather on models used by Alexander the Great's shoemaker—to hunt for Yarkand jade and Ladak turquoises, but our interest in such shops was gone. "Drive back," we said; and, repassing the mosque, we threaded again all those brilliant bazaars, were blocked in a narrow lane by a funeral, and came out finally on a common by the fort, where men and boys were flying kites. A crowd was jeering and cheering the fliers, and one bearded parent soundly boxed his son's ears when he bungled in launching his paper shield. "Drive back," and we worked slowly again to the Delhi Gate, where the crowds had even increased. Once more we threaded the brilliant labyrinth and saw the kite-fliers reel in their chargers. A spectacular sunset fired the sky, and when for the fifth time we traversed the narrow lanes, they were lanes of twinkling enchantment, every window and alcove carrying its kerosene-lamp and torches flaring by the Vazir Khan. The frosty air was laden with the bazaar's mixed smell of raw sugar, incense, spices, grease, and wood smoke, and only a dinner-company of Kipling's own could have drawn us away.
It was almost a surprise the next morning to find the streets, the shops, the crowds, the tiled front of the mosque all there, to find Lahore bazaars solid realities, and not dreams. We saw Shalimar Gardens, the triple-terraced home of the nightingale, once an imperial pleasure-ground, arranged like one seen in dreams, but now a rather dusty, dreary place of formal flower-beds, fountains, marble cascades,
