CHAPTER II
ERMYNTRUDE AND I SET OUT
'Ermyntrude,' I said, going up to my room to dress for dinner as soon as the last of the visitors had gone, and finding my maid awaiting me, 'we start for India at the end of November.'
'Oh, miss,' said Ermyntrude, collapsing dramatically on the edge of a box, with her hand on the place where she fondly imagined her heart to be; 'oh, miss, it 'ave always been my ambition to visit that savage land.'
'Good gracious, Ermyntrude!' I laughed, yet suddenly feeling somehow as if I were setting out on an adventurous Captain-Cook-like journey among the cannibals; 'it isn't a bit savage nowadays.'
Ermyntrude got up in her prim, decided sort of way, and busied herself at the toilet-table.
'Well, I can only say what I 'ave heard,' she said in a gently defensive, remonstrating sort of voice. 'But my Uncle Ebby, he was out in the Mutiny, you may remember or you may not, miss; anyway, the doings of them natives he had to tell of was most horrifying.'
