les. Boggley is going to have the
skins made up into things for me, but it will take about six months to
cure them. It is good to think there is one _mugger_ the less. I hate
the nasty treacherous beasts. Pretending they are logs, and then
eating the poor natives!

One night we had a delightful camping-ground on the edge of a lochan
well stocked with duck, which Boggley set out to shoot and ended by
missing gloriously. We were much embarrassed by a fat old landowner
heaping presents on us. He nearly wept when we refused to accept a
goat!

All the fortnight we have only met two Europeans--a couple called
Martin. I don't know quite what they were, or why they were holding up
the flag of empire in this lonely outpost, but they were the greyest
people I ever saw.

Finding ourselves in the neighbourhood of Europeans, we called, as in
duty bound. The compound round the bungalow had a dreary look, and
when we were shown into the drawing-room I could see at a glance it
was a room that no one took any interest in. The rugs on the floor
were rumpled, the cushions soiled; photographs stood about in broken
frames, and the flowers were dying in their glasses. When Mrs. Martin
came in, I wasn't surprised at her room. A long grey face, lack-lustre
eyes, greyish hair rolled up anyhow, and greyish clothes with a hiatus
between the bodice and skirt. "This," said I to myself, "is a woman
who has lost interest in herself and her surroundings," Her husband
was small and bleached-looking and, given encouragement, inclined to
be jokesome; sometimes (by accident) he was funny. Mrs. Martin paid
very little attention to us, and none whatever to her husband's jokes.
I laughed loudly. I thought it was so persevering of him to go on
trying to be funny when he was married to such a depressing woman. As
we got up to go I noticed in a corner a child's chair with a little
chintz cover, and seated in it a smiling china doll lacking one arm
and a leg.

I could hardly wait till I was outside to tell Boggley what I thought
of Mrs. Martin and her house. "The hopeless, untidy creature!" I
raved. "She doesn't deserve to have such a little cheery husband or
children."

The only thing I don't like about Boggley is that he never will help
me to abuse people.

"Poor woman," he said; "she's pretty bad." Then he told me her story
as he had heard it.

Ten years ago, it seems, she was quite a cheery managing woman, with
two little girls whom she worshipped