7 8 A Sportswoman in India 



do in their respective rooms, and the rest of us slept 

 and read and wrote. Tennis always followed after tea. 

 India ought to possess twilight, but unfortunately the 

 capacity for doing anything by halves has been denied 

 her; the sun sinks goes out like a lamp extin- 

 guished, and we almost groped about for the net and 

 balls just as it had become cool and pleasant for 

 playing ! 



One thing I like now to recall at Mian Mir the 

 creaking of the water-wheel in the garden, worked by 

 plodding oxen, hour after hour, all through the hot, 

 slow, sleepy, silent day. How often that drowsy 

 slumber-song carried one over the Borderland and 

 through the Divine Gates ! I hear it now, complaining, 

 monotonous, and essentially tired ; I have never tried 

 to listen to a sleepier sound. With noiseless movements 

 the servants passed like shadows through the quiet, 

 dark rooms, the only sound they made the rustle of 

 the curtains which divide room from room. Outside, 

 the sunlight was garish in its intensity, and the burnt 

 compound glared. And it was to this we said our 

 adieus on April 6th and proceeded to the hills, where 

 we met with not a few adventures. 



The platform at Mian Mir station the evening we 

 left was crowded with natives in white and coloured, 

 clean and dirty garments, frantically jostling each other 

 and chattering in the sun. As a native goes down 

 casually to the station and waits the rest of the day 

 and all night until his proper train leaves on the 

 following morning, most of these had probably slept 



