"Everyone is still in the Hills," observed Tara. "I know Ooty well, I was at school there for seven years."
"Oo-ah, yes, and so accomplished," volunteered Blanche, with effusion. "Tara can do lovelee lace work, and play the piano, and sing—oh, soa beautifullee!"
"There, that will do, Blanche," interrupted Tara, impatiently. To Mallender, "I'm not really accomplished, not like the girls at home."
"At home!" echoed Blanche the irrepressible, "that, of course, is another thing, oh, my! how I do long to go home!"
"You'd hate it," declared the youngest Miss Beamish, with startling abruptness, and poor Blanche was once more chastened and crushed. Her father, who had finished an excellent and hearty meal, now broke in.
"You must see our great bazaar and native city, Captain, down by the river; if the cantonment is dead, the bazaar is alive and kicking, that I can tell you; it's chock full of money and rich natives. There is one chap called Rakar, who is rolling in rupees and gold mohurs. He has grand nautches—I've seen them," and he winked expressively, "the best girls from Travancore; and he keeps fighting cocks, and fighting partridges, and all sorts of horses. One of them is a holy terror; he got him from some big Rajah, a sort of processional brute, seventeen hands high, a splendid animal to look at, but a man eater, he has killed half a dozen—at least, so I'm told."
"The native city is tremendously old," broke in Tom, anxious to contribute information. "People give it fifteen hundred years, it's said to be full of loot. I've seen some wonderful coins and jewels myself. It was right in the middle of lots of fighting, and grew rich on plunder—of course no Europeans live there."
"I can't say I'm surprised at that," remarked Mallender, dryly.
"But there were plenty here once," said Jessie. "Two or three regiments; first there was a mutiny, then cholera, after that the county became settled, and all the soldiers went away."
"I like Wellunga," announced Tara; "I was born here; but I must admit that it is an outlandish place."