Page:An American Girl in India.djvu/150

 weaknesses, and imagine we can do something quite well that we can't do a bit. The things we have and the things we really can do we don't half value, but some pet hobby that Nature never adapted us for we run for all we're worth. Who hasn't come across the otherwise sane and really gifted individual who has deluded himself into the belief that he can sing? or the really clever man who in lighter vein talks drivel, and fondly imagines that it's wit? If only we could see ourselves as others see us! Yet the world would lose half its humour if we hadn't our neighbours' little idiosyncrasies to provide our mirth. So things are doubtless best as they are. All this time Berengaria was babbling on pleasantly about the ways and doings of station life. She had taken the reins from under the pony's tail, but they really might almost as well have been left there for all the use she made of them. We were approaching a village, and the road narrowed. How we avoided running over innumerable little brown children who ran from their play in the middle of the road shrieking with laughter only just in time, Providence only knows. Through a cloud of dust past a string of heavily-laden bullock-carts we dashed at reckless speed, just shaving the wheels and the bullocks' horns. Old men and older women seemed deaf to the noise of our approach, and only escaped from under the pony's nose at the latest possible minute. It was only with the greatest difficulty that I kept from shouting at them. Berengaria sat sublimely indifferent. They might