when we came in, but for what we did receive we are truly thankful, for
it was sorely needed.

How we got home again now seems like a dream. I have just a vague
recollection of hours and hours in the warm dusk, and crowds of people
in evening dress waiting till their carriages came up. Perhaps the
arrangements could not have been better? Some of us dozed, some smoked
Government House cheroots, which were good, and the time passed. All
conversation gradually stopped, and you only heard the number of the
gharry or carriage shouted out with a rich brogue and sometimes a little
stifled joke and a "Chelo!" which seems to stand for "All right," "Go
ahead," "Look sharp," or "Go on and be damned to you," according to
intonation and person addressed. I do not quite understand how it took
such hours to get everyone away, and I do not understand how we ever
managed to get up that vast square staircase up the enormous central
tower of the Taj Hotel, for G. was deadly tired, so of course the lift
wasn't working--it looked so big and grey, and silent in the cold light
of morning.

Then to sleep, and tired dreams of the whole day and evening; I dreamt I
was in a Government House and the guests had gone and I met a dream
Prince and a dream of an A.D.C. in exquisite uniform who said, "quai
hai," and in an instant there were dream drinks, and cheroots such as
one used to be able to get long ago, and we planned ways to remedy
abuses, and the greatest was the abuse of the Royal Academical
privileges; and at such length we went into this, that this morning I
wrote out the whole indictment and it covered six of these pages, and so
it is too long to insert here. And our remedy as it was in a dream was
at once effective--sculpture and painting became as free and as strong
an influence in our national life in Britain as literature is at this
moment--then came a frightful explosion! and I awoke, and the sun was
blazing out of a blue sky through the open windows--then it came again,
a terrific bang! and the jalousies rattled and the whole of the Taj
Hotel shook for the war ships were saluting The Prince of Wales, and he
and his aides-de-camp and all the officials in his train had been up for
hours, "doing their best to serve their country and their King," whilst
we private people slumbered.

But whither have I strayed in this discourse? Am I not rather wandering
from the point, as the cook remarked to the eel, telling dreams instead
of makin