Page:An American Girl in India.djvu/159

 in Slumpanugger?' I asked surprised, having heard so much of Indian hospitality. To say that you are in a bath in order to avoid seeing people struck me as being so very inhospitable. Then Berengaria explained. 'It isn't exactly that they don't want to see you,' she said. 'They are probably very curious to do that.' She paused and chose a finger rusk carefully. Berengaria knew the value of an effective pause in imparting information. 'It's that they are not always quite prepared.'

'Oh,' I said, a light suddenly dawning in upon me. I had visions of curl papers and dressing-gowns.

'India is a slack sort of place in that way,' Berengaria went on, 'and it's easy to get slouchy and potter about the house and garden in something that you wouldn't dare be seen in outside.'

'I see,' I said. 'Hence the fiction of the bath to avoid being seen if the visitor is not persistent, or to give one time to change if she is.' 'It's a terrible Indian habit,' discoursed Berengaria, as she drank her third cup of tea. 'You will be surprised. Some really quite nice people who ought to know better seem scarcely ever to be visible in their own homes. I don't believe they trouble to put on anything but a dressing-gown until it's time to go out.'

'How dreadful,' I said. I soon found that Berengaria preferred to do all the talking, just giving you time for an interjection now and then.