"I'm sure you won't. I'll call for you and bring you both down to Lebong if I may, Mrs. Smith."
"Will you lunch with us then?" asked Ida. "You know where I am staying—the Woodbrook Hotel. Noreen is coming there too."
"Thank you, I'll be delighted," replied the Rifleman.
"Very well. One o'clock sharp. Now we'll say good-bye for the present."
Charlesworth shook hands with both ladies and strode off in triumph to where Turner was awaiting him impatiently.
"Now, dear, we'll go," said Ida. "I have a couple of dandies waiting for us."
"Dandies?" echoed the girl in surprise. "What do you mean?"
The older woman laughed.
"Oh, not dandies like Captain Charlesworth. These are chairs in which coolies carry you. In Darjeeling you can't drive. You must go in dandies, or rickshas, unless you ride. Here, Miguel! Have you got the missie baba's luggage?" This to her Goanese servant.
"Yes, mem sahib. All got," replied the "boy," a native Christian with the high sounding name of Miguel Gonsalves Da Costa from the Portugese Colony of Goa on the West Coast of India below Bombay. In his tweed cap and suit of white ducks he did not look as imposing as the Hindu or Mohammedan butlers of other Europeans on the platform with their long-skirted white coats, coloured kamarbands, and big puggris, or turbans, with their employers' crests on silver brooches pinned in the front. But Goanese servants are excellent and much in demand in Bombay.