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 dressing-table, and one chair. There were only two things to be said for that room—it was lofty, and it had a bath-room attached. But the fact that it was lofty didn't make it airy. There was a big long window, but it looked straight out on to a dead wall, and that room had a nasty sort of mouldy smell about it that wasn't Eastern at all, but very much Western and Bloomsbury. I felt that if I were going to be ill a Bombay hotel was the very last place I should choose as a mise en scène. As for the cooking and the meals, I never felt so devoutly thankful before that I had a strong constitution. Lady Manifold is a yellow sort of person at the best of times, and she was quite knocked up after the first day, and fell back on soups and puddings. I suppose it was that I expected too much. I had looked upon India as the land of fruit, and I imagined that the tables in Bombay would be groaning beneath a wealth of mangoes, melons, pomegranates, and bananas. The first they told me were not in season; the second and third I lost my patience in trying to describe to an idiotic Bombay boy; while the last was the only fruit that they provided us with, and that of such a quality that it must have been extremely economical from the managerial point of view, for no one ate it.

Mentioning a Bombay 'boy' reminds me of the curious habit people have out here of calling their servants 'boys.' The first time I heard someone call out for his servant I thought he must be calling my soldier-boy friend on board, and it took me some time to get out of the way of thinking of him