Page:An American Girl in India.djvu/175

 Slowly it unwound itself like a cocoon from among various odd coverings, and struggled to its feet. It looked very dazed and sleepy, and seemed rather top-heavy, and all its movements were deliberate, but of course that was only to be expected of a foundation-stone. First it picked up a blue puggaree and put it on its head. Then one by one very slowly it gathered up all its other belongings, including a tiny little bolster for its head. Finally, to my speechless amazement, it picked up the lamp and solemnly marched away. It gave me a real depressed extinction-of-the-last-hope sort of feeling straight away. Even the very foundation of the British Constitution in India had gone away and left me.

I stood in that doorway—one of eighteen—feeling right down helpless. Everything was so horribly still. I felt myself straining my ears to catch a sound of any kind, yet knowing all the time that if I did hear one it would be even more aweinspiring than the silence. Slowly I turned and went inside, and locked the doordoor. [sic] There were probably seventeen others still unlocked. The huge room, only dimly lit by a single lamp, seemed to swallow me up. I felt like a very small cutlet in a very big meat-safe. Then I suddenly remembered one of Aunt Agatha's maxims, 'If you are going to die you will die,' with various sorts of exhortations to do it decently. So I tried to buck up. I was in a strange house in a strange land. I didn't know where anybody's rooms were. Even the very foundation-stone of the British Constitution in India