Chapter 10

THE EPISODE OF THE GUIDE WHO KNEW THE COUNTRY

We toured all round India with the Meadowcrofts; and really the lady who
was "so very exclusive" turned out not a bad little thing, when once
one had succeeded in breaking through the ring-fence with which she
surrounded herself. She had an endless, quenchless restlessness, it is
true; her eyes wandered aimlessly; she never was happy for two
minutes together, unless she was surrounded by friends, and was seeing
something. What she saw did not interest her much; certainly her tastes
were on the level with those of a very young child. An odd-looking
house, a queerly dressed man, a tree cut into shape to look like a
peacock, delighted her far more than the most glorious view of the
quaintest old temple. Still, she must be seeing. She could no more sit
still than a fidgety child or a monkey at the Zoo. To be up and
doing was her nature--doing nothing, to be sure; but still, doing it
strenuously.

So we went the regulation round of Delhi and Agra, the Taj Mahal, and
the Ghats at Benares, at railroad speed, fulfilling the whole duty of
the modern globe-trotter. Lady Meadowcroft looked at everything--for ten
minutes at a stretch; then she wanted to be off, to visit the next thing
set down for her in her guide-book. As we left each town she murmured
mechanically: "Well, we've seen THAT, thank Heaven!" and straightway
went on, with equal eagerness, and equal boredom, to see the one after
it.

The only thing that did NOT bore her, indeed, was Hilda's bright talk.

"Oh, Miss Wade," she would say, clasping her hands, and looking up
into Hilda's eyes with her own empty blue ones, "you ARE so funny! So
original, don't you know! You never talk or think of anything like other
people. I can't imagine how such ideas come up in your mind. If _I_ were
to try all day, I'm sure I should never hit upon them!" Which was so
perfectly true as to be a trifle obvious.

Sir Ivor, not being interested in temples, but in steel rails, had gone
on at once to his concession, or contract, or whatever else it was, on
the north-east frontier, leaving his wife to follow and rejoin him in
the Himalayas as soon as she had exhausted the sights of India. So,
after a few dusty weeks of wear and tear on the Indian railways, we met
him once more in the recesses of Nepaul, where he was busy constructing
a light local line for the reigning Maharajah.

If Lady Meadowcroft had been bored at Allahabad and Ajmere, she was
immensely more bored in a rough bungalow among the trackless depths of
the Himalayan valleys. To anybody with eyes in his head, indeed, Toloo,
where Sir Ivor had pitched his headquarters, was lovely enough to keep
one