omes just as
I'd begun to draw the Prince as we saw him last night in a swirl of
dust, outriders, and cavalry, blurred in night and dust and heat--it is
another card! To meet their Royal Highnesses, the Prince and Princess of
Wales to-night at Government House! Surely this is the veritable land of
the tales of the Arabian Nights! It comes as a shock to live all your
life in your own country and never to see the shadow of Royalty, then
suddenly to be asked twice in one day to view them as they pass--I am
quite overcome--It will be a novel experience, and won't it be warm! It
means top hat, frock coat and an extra high collar for the afternoon,
and in the evening a hard, hot, stiff shirt and black hot clothes, and a
crush and the thermometer at pucca hot-weather temperature, and damp at
that, but who cares, if we actually see Royalty--twice in one day!

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

I am determined not to go out to-day, not on any account. I will sit in
this tower room of this palace and write and draw, and will shut these
jalousies that open west and south and north-east, and offer
distracting views, and I will contemplate the distempered walls in the
shade till I have recalled all I saw yesterday. If I go to the window,
or outside, there will be too many new things to see. I maintain that
for one day of new sights, a day is needed to arrange them in the
tablets of memory.... But is it possible I saw all these things in one
day! From a tiny wedding in the Kirk in the morning to the Royal
Reception at Government House at night; from dawn till late night one
splendid line of pictures of Oriental and Occidental pageantry, of which
I have heard and read of so much and realised so little compared with
reality.

[Illustration]

We started the day with a wedding of a lady we knew on board, to a young
Scottish officer, the day after her arrival. We directed our "boy" to
tell our driver to go to the Free Church. But apparently neither of
these benighted heathens could distinguish between the "Free" and the
"Wee Free," or the "U. P." or the "Established" and took us to the
English Church. We had such a hunt for the particular branch of the
Church of Scotland. It was quite a small kirk, and our numbers were in
proportion. We arrived a little hot and angry at being so misled, but
the best man, a brother officer of the bridegroom, had not turned up, so
we waited a little and chatted and jok