CHAPTER XIX
THE END OF THE INDIAN EMPIRE
T was a damp and dreary, a raw and chilly afternoon when we drove away from Kipling's people and waited for an hour in that drafty, echoing fortress—the Lahore railway station. The Northern Railway across the Panjab, being a government line, is subject to delays and alterations of schedule to suit special needs, and the red carpets at hand for the arrival of the "L. G." of the Panjab on the following afternoon promised greater delays had we deferred our start. As all first-class cars are run at a loss on Indian railways, we could not complain at the usual forlorn conveyance; but the rattling window-panes of blue or violet glass, admitting the chill, actinic light, made the shabby car drearier and dingier than usual, and seemed to add degrees of cold to the air. The bleak and stony yellow plain, like the sage-brush and alkali wastes of Nevada, looked snow-covered through these tinted glasses, and the cold, blue, depressing light finally suggested the experiments made with invalids, lunatics, and plants at the time of the blue-glass craze
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