he had been out of sight a good deal lately--he had been sewing
his own clothes, and they were really well made! "An Eastern Potentate"
he called himself, or a Khedive, and ran to riot in a jumble of orders
and jewellery and gold chains. Trousers and jacket were pale cinnamon
with scarlet facings and a red turbash, and how well the clothes fitted!
clever Mr B.; he knows so much about many subjects, and can sew! He and
my Judge acquaintance were arguing last night. The Judge is a
Cornishman. When you get a highly educated Cornishman and an Irishman
together, however long they have been in England, and they begin to
talk, it's worth while sitting out. B. explained in soft and winning
words to the Judge that his life was a giddy round of society, long
leave, and high pay, whilst he in the far North led a lonely life of
continuous hard work and no pay to speak of; and the Judge, with equal
if not greater fluency, described B.'s up-country life as perpetual
leave on full pay, a long delightful picnic, and so on and so forth. My
sympathy went with the Judge; I think his life is the least pleasant,
but one had to allow for his greater rapidity of speech and practice in
courts before juries, besides his art studies in Paris. Later R. joined;
he is an advocate in Calcutta and hails from the Hebrides. Then came a
Welsh Major, a gunner. That made a party of an Irishman, two Scots (one
of them anglicised), a Welsh, and a Cornishman, and they discussed
everything under the sun except the Celtic Renaissance: for they spend
their days on the confines of the Empire, and the brain takes time to
make the tail wag.

CHAPTER VIII

[Illustration: B]

Bombay.--I've travelled these three weeks with people who have lived in
India, and I have been brought up on Indian books and Indian home
letters, and in one way and another have picked up an idea of what the
people and the features of nature are like, but I have received only a
very faint idea of its real light and colour. I thought Egypt had given
me a fair idea of what India might be, but nothing in Egypt can touch
what I've seen in these two half days.

Our first view of Bombay from where we lay at anchor a mile off shore
was very disappointing. All there is to see is a low shore and a
monotonous line of trees and houses; the air was warm and damp and hazy,
and the smoke from two or three tall chimneys hung in thin wreaths over
land and water. In our immediate neighbourhood stea