doing it. You must give up all thoughts of that, and turn all your mind to the safety of your hat and skirts. Say you get inside safely somehow without leaving a yard of frills caught on the step, it isn't all just plain sailing even then. It's only in a very superior ticca ghari indeed that you can sit up straight with your hat on. If you happen to be a stranger in those parts, and have guilelessly entered that ticca with a nice new aigrette on you'll simply have to sit with your head stuck forward, just as if you were going to butt the unfortunate young man who is probably crouched up opposite trying to keep his knees and feet out of the way of your skirts. Then you start, and that ghari shakes and rattles, and you bump about inside till your limbs feel kind of loose like a dancing doll's, and if that young man opposite will insist on talking it makes the strain worse, for you never can catch more than half he says on account of the exasperating rattle. Added to this the road is sure either to be very uneven and very full of unexpected holes or else of a stony hardness inconceivable. So if you can get out of that ghari looking fresh and spick and span, you must be one of the wonders of the age. You are generally so much upset when you do get out that you haven't any sympathy for the poor little rats of horses which have done so much better for you than their looks promised.
But I think, in spite of all its drawbacks, I shall always have a particular affection for the Indian ticca ghari, especially for the one that came rumbling and swaying and creaking up the drive that after-
