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110 It is never pleasant to come down from the heights, and we had rather a dreary journey to Siliguri.

Boggley had taken care to wire for a lower berth in the train for me, but it seems ordained that I shall ascend in Indian trains. I again found myself in a carriage with my Americans, and the daughter had such bad toothache, and seemed so much to dread the prospect of mounting to the eyrie, that I had to say that I would rather like it for myself.

Toothache kept Miss America awake and made her talkative, which was unfortunate for me. She wanted to know all about the manners and customs of the British. She only knew us from the outside, so to speak. Incidentally she shed a lurid light on the habits of the American male. It seems that young men in America are expected to carry offerings of fruit and flowers and candy to young women—not when they are engaged, mark you; what is expected of them then I daren't think—but to quite irrelevant young women. "Don't young gentlemen do so in England?" asked Miss America. "No," I said, feeling that I was making out my countrymen poor, mean creatures indeed, but feeling also how much more