as effusively in order to hide the amusement in my eyes. 'It's marvellous to me how you have stood the climate.'
Berengaria simpered and looked frightfully pleased, and I knew I had made a good impression straight away. But inwardly I trembled to think to what further depths my veracity might still have to descend.
A chaprassi—a gorgeous blaze of red and gold—took charge of Ermyntrude and our belongings, and Berengaria and I mounted the smart tum-tum she had brought to fetch me, and drove away. The last I saw of Ermyntrude she was eyeing doubtfully the tonga, drawn by two huge bullocks, in which she and the luggage were to make the journey to the house.
'It's a five-mile drive,' said Berengaria as we started off, 'but this pony does it in just over half an hour.'
Now I'm not at all a nervous sort of person in dog-carts generally, but during that five-mile drive I kept getting sort of flashes of my past life like a drowning man. Berengaria's driving just beat hollow anything I've ever seen in that line before or since. She dangled the reins quite loose, talked volubly all the time, and paid no attention to the pony whatsoever. It was purely due to the good nature and consideration of that pony that we reached our destination without mishap. That road seemed just about designed to give you a spill if it possibly could. It ran for the most part along a high embankment, quite narrow, with a good
