Page:An American Girl in India.djvu/144

 CHAPTER VIII BERENGARIA is a wonderful sight when its many platforms are crowded with a native throng as they were when I first saw them. The women with their bright red and blue saris, and jingling ornaments, carrying their bundles on their heads, and moving with typical eastern grace; the children undismayed by the noise and bustle—a dot of three or four struggling along with a mite a few months old astride across her hips, while their like in age in the West are still with the nurse and the perambulator; and the men more soberly clad in white—which is often brown with dirt—but picturesque, with trim and curled black beards or clean-cut, clean-shaven faces and deep brown eyes—all made up a continually changing scene like some kaleidoscope of ever-moving colours. It was all rather odoriferous, though one soon got used to that. But don't wear a skirt with a train on an Indian railway-platform. The native has a habit of arriving hours before his train is timed to start, and camping out upon the platform with all his