rful farewells and many promises to
write had been exchanged, we departed.

The special Providence that looks after casual people has guided
Boggley to quite a nice house in a nice part of the town. Many
Government people who are in Calcutta only for the cold weather--I
mean those of them who are burdened not with wealth but
women-folk--find it cheaper and more convenient to live in a
boarding-house. Does that conjure up to you a vision of Bloomsbury,
and tall grey houses, and dirty maid-servants, and the Passing of
Third Floor Backs? It isn't one bit like that. This boarding-house
consists, oddly enough, of four big houses all standing a little
distance apart in a compound. They are let out in suites of rooms, and
the occupants can either all feed together in the public dining-room
or in lonely splendour in their own apartments. We have five rooms on
the ground floor. Of the two sitting-rooms one is almost quite dark,
and is inhabited by a suite of furniture, three marble-topped tables
on which Boggley had set out the few photographs and trifles which he
hasn't yet lost, and a sad-looking cabinet; the other opens into
the garden, and is a nice cheerful room. The dark room we have made
Boggley's study; as he only uses it at night, it doesn't matter about
the want of light, and there is a fine large writing-table which holds
stacks of papers. We got the marble-topped tables carried into the
cheery room and covered them with tablecloths from a shop in Park
Street, bought rugs for the floor and hangings for the doors, and with
a few cushions and palms and flowers the room is quite pretty and
home-like. I like the chairs, enormous cane things with long wooden
arms which Boggley says are meant for putting one's feet on, and most
comfortable.

Boggley's bedroom is next his study, but I have to take a walk before
I come to mine, out of the window,--or door, I'm never sure which it
is,--down some steps, then along a garden-walk, round a corner, and
up some more steps, where I reach first a small ante-room and then my
bedroom. Like the other rooms, it is whitewashed and has a very high
ceiling. Some confiding sparrows have built a nest in a hole in the
wall, and--and this is really upsetting--there are _ten_ different
ways of entering the room, doors and windows, and half of them I can't
lock or bar or fasten up in any way. What I should do if a Mutiny
occurred I can't think! My bed with its mosquito-curtains stands like
a li