Page:O Douglas - Olivia in India.djvu/156

144 complicates matters. My heroine, too, is a failure. I like her name—Belinda—but it is the only thing I like about her. What is the good of me laboriously writing down that she is beautiful and charming when I am convinced in my own mind she is nothing of the kind? However, I mean to persevere....

We all meet at tea—the nicest time of the day I think. My friend Katie says the world isn't properly warmed up till five o'clock, and certainly there is a feeling of comfort all over everything at the clink of the teacups. Mrs. Russel being Scots, knows how to give a proper tea, with plates, and knives, and scones, and jam; and I am as greedy as a schoolboy over it. Yesterday there was no milk—such a blow. The cows had wandered into a man's land, and he, as the custom is, marched them into the pound five miles away, and there we were—milkless!

The country round Takai is quite pretty almost like Scots moorland. Yesterday we went for a picnic to a river at the opening of a pass—a most interesting place where not very long ago a native boy had been eaten by a tiger. You see, picnics in the jungle are not quite the insipid things they are at home! There is always the chance that the unwary may be devoured. Actually we did see