"Elma doesn't care for dinner-parties," Mrs. Macdonald said regretfully.
Elma was her daughter, and this was her first season in Simla.
"Oh, mother, I like the parties well enough!" said Elma. "What I hate is the horrid way you have of getting to parties."
"What do you mean?" the third lady asked.
"Elma means that she doesn't like the jampans," Mrs. Macdonald explained.
"I am always frightened," said Elma in a low voice, and a little of the delicate colour she had brought out from England with her faded from her lovely face. "It seems so dreadful to go rushing down those steep, narrow lanes, on the edge of a precipice, in little rickety two-wheeled chairs that would turn over in a minute if one of the men were to stumble and fall; and then one would roll all down I don't know how many feet, down those steep precipices: some of them have no railings or protection of any kind, and in the evening the roads are quite dark under the overhanging trees. And people have fallen over them and been killed—every one knows that."
"Elma cannot speak Hindustani," the mother further explained, "and the first time she went out she called 'Jeldi, jeldi!' to the men, and of course they ran faster and faster. I was really rather alarmed myself when they came tearing past me round a corner."
"I thought jeldi meant 'slowly,'" said Elma.
"Well, at any rate you have learnt one word of the language," said Mrs. Thompson, laughing.
"I should not mind so much if mother was with me," said the girl; "but those horrid little jampans only hold one person—and mother's jampannis always run on so fast in front, and my men have to keep up with them. I wish I wasn't going this evening."