Page:An American Girl in India.djvu/227

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THE TRIUMPH OF MR. ELGEE POTTS
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were waiting for. John came and talked to us, and told us he had asked the driver and the guard why we were delayed, but they neither of them knew. It grew to nearly half an hour that we had waited there, and still no signs came of our getting in. Then at last there was a rush and a roar, and a train swept by us and dashed on into Delhi. We were all very excited to know what important personage it could contain that it had kept two Lieutenant-Governors' trains waiting all that time. Berengaria was particularly indignant.

'It must be either the Governor of Bombay or the Governor of Madras,' she declared, 'or else the Nizam of Hyderabad. They would never dare to keep a Lieutenant-Governor waiting for anybody else.'

At last our time came, and we did sweep in, followed by the other Lieutenant-Governor's train. So they only gave us thirteen guns between us, which I thought was mean. But they sounded all right, and there was such confusion worse confounded going on in Delhi Station that I don't think it really much mattered. Then at last we found out for whom we had been kept waiting. It was for Mr. Elgee Potts, of U.S.A.! Oh, Indian officialdom, oh, autocratic Litutenant-Governors! how was it that this came to pass? The almighty dollar had stormed the last defences, and triumphed even over the Indian Beaurocracy. Mr. Elgee Potts, in his special train, had bought the right, at some enormous figure that makes the lay mind reel, to travel through first everywhere before everybody, save