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382
WINTER INDIA

ment, Dhoond Dhu shaking the last turban fold loose with his child-like spasms of glee.

On reaching Lonauli early in the afternoon, we had asked the station-master to have a compartment reserved on the midnight train to Bombay. "Certingly, memsahib, certingly. I will wire to Poona." At six o'clock we had no answer—because no wire had been sent. At seven the condition continued, the station-master was still absent, and the assistant would not send a telegram "because there iss no rule for thatt." We sent a telegram and asked the assistant to sell us the tickets then, that we might sleep in the waiting-room until the train came at five minutes after midnight. "No, no," said the babu; "the 12:05 iss one of to-morrow's trains. I cannot sell you ticket now and mix my accounts for two days so terribly. I should lose some money, and I am poor man."

It was a hot, close night, and the scorching air came in waves from the bare cliffs of the Bhor Ghat as the train curved and reversed and crept from one twinkling light and group of lights to another down the two thousand feet to the plain. With our arrival at Bombay at six in the morning, we had spent our twentieth night on Indian railway trains in three months of travel, in that first winter; and gladly we bade farewell to the red razais.