When I left the train I
did business with divers Kings, and in eight days passed through many changes
of life. Sometimes I wore dress-clothes and consorted with Princes and
Politicals, drinking from crystal and eating from silver. Sometimes I lay out
upon the ground and devoured what I could get, from a plate made of leaves,
and drank the running water, and slept under the same rug as my servant. It
was all in the day's work.
Then I headed for the Great Indian Desert upon the proper date, as I had
promised, and the night Mail set me down at Marwar Junction, where a funny
little, happy-go-lucky, native managed railway runs to Jodhpore. The Bombay
Mail from Delhi makes a short halt at Marwar. She arrived just as I got in,
and I had just time to hurry to her platform and go down the carriages. There
was only one Second-class on the train. I slipped the window and looked down
upon a flaming-red beard, half covered by a railway-rug. That was my man, fast
asleep, and I dug him gently in the ribs.
He woke with a grunt, and I saw his face in the light of the lamps.
It was a great and shining face.
"Tickets again?" said he.
"No," said I. "I am to tell you that he is gone South for the week. He has
gone South for the week!"
The train had begun to move out.
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