It is well that the Remyo ladies can interest themselves in the manner I have indicated, for between breakfast and tea time the sun is so terribly hot, as to render out-door exercise quite impossible, and in the absence of many books time is sometimes difficult to kill.
Ladies in England, with their hundred and one occupations, their amusements, household duties, and perhaps charities to attend to, can have but a very faint conception of how wearisomely long and lonely are some days, to their Anglo-Indian sisters. Their husbands away, or busy much of the day, deprived of their children's society, with few books, few amusements, and practically no duties, life is far from being an unqualified joy to these exiled women. Let the British matron who would accuse her Eastern sister of idleness, frivolity, and worse, consider these things, and forbear to judge.
The men, with their work and sport to engage their time, are less apt to find the days long; but even they at times feel the same strain. Indeed, I remember one day, when there was no work to be done, my brother and sister, (who had but lately left Rangoon with its constant whirl of gaiety) became so hopelessly and desperately bored, that we were reduced to revive our drooping spirits by making sugar toffee over the spirit kettle.
Before breakfast and after tea are the opportunities for exercise and amusement, and the most is made of these cooler hours.
Remyo boasts a gravel tennis court, and a nine-hole golf course, mostly bunkers. Two more tennis courts, and a cricket and polo ground are in course of construction, preparatory to the arrival of the Great Future to which I have referred. Each form of exercise enjoys about three days popularity at a time. At one time tennis will be the rage, and every one repairs to the Club court, tho' so short are the evenings before sunset, that it is impossible to play more than three sets an afternoon, so we are forced to be content with about three games each. Then the tennis rage dies away, and golf suddenly becomes the fashionable game.
Like most occupations in Remyo, golf is golf under difficulties, though personally, whenever and wherever I play golf, I play under difficulties. The links are chiefly jungle, and a wood axe would probably be the most useful accessory to the enjoyment of the game. The holes are short, and a good player would probably drive on to the green every time, but at Remyo we were not good players. If by some lucky chance one drove perfectly straight, there was nothing worse to fear than a tree, or a deep nullah, filled with reeds and hoof marks, a nullah where might be spent a harassing quarter of an hour, slashing at a half hidden ball, which, in sheer desperation, one was at last compelled to pick out. But if the drive were not straight, then what endless and interesting possibilities or impossibilities were revealed. Heaps of stones, inpenetrable bushes, reeds, rabbit-holes, and every form of acute misery which the golfer's soul can conceive.
Yet the Links are very popular, and are the scene of many an exciting match, in spite of lost balls, broken clubs, and lost tempers. I have seen three clubs broken by one man in an afternoon's match, and he was neither a particularly bad player, nor especially violent.
The Burman is not a success as a caddie. Our loogalays looked upon the game at first with indifference, then with dislike. I think they imagined that we purposely drove the ball into a hopeless tangle of grass and bushes in order to scold them when they could not find it. They could never be induced to make any distinction between the clubs, and looked hurt when we curtly refused to drive with our putters. Their notion of marking balls, too, is very primitive; Po Mya only found one during my stay, which it turned out was an old one lost some days before. In fine, they seemed to think it the greatest folly that we should tramp up and down, and in and out of nullahs, and lose our tempers so unnecessarily, because of a small white ball, when we had plenty more at home.
On some afternoons everyone will repair to the new polo and cricket ground, and walk up and down the new laid turf, discussing solemnly the drainage, and general advantages and disadvantages of the position; or, feeling energetic, will practise cricket, and the knowing ones will give exhibitions of tricky polo strokes.