Page:Kennedy, Robert John - A Journey in Khorassan (1890).djvu/39

 that she was in search of milk, but, later on, a mouse, having by the activity of its movements revealed its presence inside Chivers' pillow, in which it had been accidentally packed when the pillow-case was being filled with straw, we concluded that it and not the milk was the bait that had attracted the feline intruder.

From Miamai to Miandasht the distance is twenty-four miles, which we accomplished in three hours. Our direction was south-east by south, and for the first five and the last four miles the road was level and good, the centre part being rough, undulating, and stony. There is no village at Miandasht, but merely a large fortified and gloomy serai, occupied by about thirty families, including that of the telegraph clerk, who, together with his gholam, came out to meet us. We lunched on the floor of his office, and were much amused by the antics of his two little boys, aged five and six respectively, to whom we gave biscuits and krans. The father thoroughly appreciated our whisky, having apparently acquired a taste for strong drink when resident at Bombay, a place of