regret I brought Marjory. I do trust we shall not see any more so absolutely devoid of shame as that.'
Poor Lady Manifold! I guess she saw some hundreds of thousands quite as scantily clothed as that before she reached Bombay again, but I don't think she ever got so used to them as not to feel a shock each time she saw one. Marjory once horrified her by declaring that she should love them if only they were clean. If it were possible to horrify her more than that, I did it. 'I like them just as they are,' I remember saying, 'unwashed, unkempt, rather odoriferous, but very picturesque.' I think Lady Manifold has regarded me as something very modern ever since. But this is anticipating. It isn't really till you come to go away that you begin to feel with how firm a grip the life of India has taken hold of you, how you love the naked little nut-brown babies playing in the sun, and how the very savour of the East lingers in the nostrils with a strange regret.
But as yet I am only on the Apollo Bunder, and getting my first glimpse of a coolie on his native heath, and sniffing the air daintily as he passes, not quite sure at first if I am going to like him. Marjory, when we joined her outside, was undergoing the same experience. She was looking quite animated.
'Oh,' she said, as we got into the carriage beside her, 'I've never seen men like this before. Just look at that man there.'
I looked, and I blush to write it, though I must
