“‘I’m afraid I wrote you a hatefully skimpy letter last time—,’” h’m, we can skip that; here’s where they started: “‘It was the beastliest journey that I ever made. To begin with, we were the eighteenth tonga that day, so we got tired and wretched ponies; we had one pair for fifteen miles and couldn’t get another pair for love or money. We left Murree at two o’clock and got to Pindi at nine. The dust was ghastly. Mercifully Baba slept like a lump in our arms from five till nine, so he was all right. We had from nine till one to wait in Pindi Station, and had dinner, and Baba had a wash and clean-up and a bottle, and we got on board the train and off. Baba’s cot, etc.; and we settled down for the night. Nurse and Baba and Mary and I were in one carriage and Jim next door. I slept beautifully till one o’clock, and then I woke and stayed awake. The bumping was terrific, and it made me so angry to look down on the others and see them fast asleep! I had an upper berth. Baba slept from eleven-thirty till six-thirty! So we had no trouble at all with him——
“Well, and so they got to Kohat. (I hope this isn’t boring you, Katie.)”
“‘It was most beautifully cool and fresh, and we had the mess tonga and drove to the bungalow. The flowering shrubs here would delight Auntie Grace. I’ve fallen in love with a bush of hibiscus in the compound, but find it won’t live in water, but droops directly one picks it. The trees are mostly the palmy kind, and so green, and the ranges of hills behind are exactly like the Red Sea ranges. The outside of our bungalow is covered with purple convolvulus, and the verandah goes practically all round it. Jim’s room is just like him—heads he’s shot, study, dressing-room, and workshop, all in one, and it’s quite the fullest room in the house. Beyond that there’s my room, looking out over the Sinai Range——’
“Then there are the drawing and dining-rooms——”
“‘The curtains are a pale terra-cotta pink over the door and dark green in the bay-windows, with white net in front. The drawing-room is all green. The durrie (that’s the carpet) is green, with a darker border, and the sofa and chairs and mantelpiece-cover and the screen behind the sofa all green. There’s another bay-window, with far curtains of green and the near ones chintz, an awfully pretty cream spotted net with a green hem let in. That makes three lots, two in the window itself and a third on a pole where the arch comes into the room. Then over the three doors there are chintz curtains, cream, with a big pattern of pink and green and blue, just like Harrods’ catalogue——’
“Can’t you see it all!—H’m, h’m!... Then on the Sunday morning they got the mess tonga and went out to Dhoda, with butterfly-nets, and Jim went fishing—h’m, h’m—and she says—
“‘It’s just like the Old Testament; I shouldn’t have been in the least surprised to meet Abraham and Jacob. It’s the flatness of it, and the flocks and herds. There are women with pitchers on their heads, and a man was making scores of bricks with mud and straw—exactly like the pictures of the Children of Israel in “Line upon Line.” And about a hundred horses and mules and donkeys and carts all stopped at midday, because it was so hot, and it was just what I’d always imagined Jacob doing. But inside cantonments it isn’t a bit Biblical, but rather too civilized, etc.’
(“Isn’t Katie patient, listening to all this, auntie!”)
“‘But you can’t go far afield at Kohat. At Murree you could always get a three or four mile walk round Pindi Point, but here it’s just to the Club and back. We go to the Central Godown and the Fancy Godown to shop. The Central is groceries, and the Fancy toothpowder, Scrubb’s Ammonia, etc. On Saturday they were afraid Captain Horrocks had smallpox, and so we all got vaccinated, but now that we’ve all taken beautifully it seems it isn’t smallpox after all, and we’ve all got swelled arms, but Captain Horrocks is off the sick-list to-morrow. Colonel Wade is smaller than ever. Mrs. Wade is coming out by the “Rewa.” Mrs. Beecher came to tea on Sunday——’
(“Is that our Mrs. Beecher, when Uncle Dick was at Chatham, auntie?”)—