gent as you can. You see, there are so many objections to either course. Most people aren't just exactly good at explaining things, and they get sort of annoyed if you keep on pulling them up and asking them what they mean. They take it as a kind of reflection on their intelligibility. It's quite surprising, too, how ignorant most people really are, and what lots of words they use they don't a bit know the meaning of, or, at least, can't explain to anybody else. So if you don't want to annoy your friends don't be of too inquiring a turn of mind. But, on the other hand, how can you take an intelligent interest in life and learn things if you don't occasionally become a note of interrogation? I suppose the happy mean in this, as in so many other things, is just to lie low, observe all you can, and then ask a question on the quiet to give you the final clue when there's nobody round about. Now I don't think my best friend could call me curious. I'm just an ordinary intelligent being who likes to know things. So when I arrived in India, being a perfect stranger to the country, I thought I couldn't go far wrong in asking a few questions when I ran up suddenly against something I didn't know anything about. But as I think I mentioned in the case of the Bombay boy, I soon found out that Anglo-Indians have got into the comfortable habit of just accepting things as they are without bothering themselves to ask the why and wherefore, and they expect you to do the same, and they get real annoyed if you won't lie quiet, and begin to nose around.
