Page:ER Scidmore--Winter India.djvu/136

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WINTER INDIA
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lessly, contemptuously, and evidently denied us the right to occupy any part of her compartment and hemisphere. For the trip to Calcutta, she had brought with her into the compartment a tin steamer-trunk, a canvas hold-all, two dressing-bags, a Gladstone bag, a tiffin-basket, a basket tea-pot, a tin bonnet-box, a roll of razais and fur rugs, a shawl-strap bundle of cloaks and jackets, and one large bouquet. Her "boxes" were in the luggage-van.

But this lady of luggage was only forerunner to the memsahib we met when we left Calcutta the next night. We had sent the bearer ahead with our luggage two hours before train time. When we reached the Howrah station, we found that while our man was called off to pay a charge for extra luggage the paper of reservation had been unpinned from one lower berth and fastened to the upper one by an Anglo-Indian lady, who then unrolled her bedding, seated herself on it, and became deaf to any remarks or remonstrance. She had brought with her into the compartment the usual British impedimenta—tin steamer-trunk, canvas hold-all, Gladstone bag, laundry-bag, dressing-bag, tiffin-basket, a roll of umbrellas, a tennis racket, a bag with her pith hat, also a wicker chair, a collection of garments which hung from every available hook, and a large round-topped Saratoga trunk. When we protested to the station-master about the changing of his reservations, he could or dared do nothing. Possession was nine points, and the tenth was a gleam in her eye that might have warned away a lion-tamer. We produced our receipts and insisted that the station-mas-