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These were of all sizes, and extraordinarily beautiful in their separate form and detail and in their harmony with the general plan. They were Jain temples, Babaji Rao said, dedicated to Siva, the Dissolver and Reproducer, and we might enter them so long as we removed our shoes. I did so; but the two women did not want to spoil their stockings, and remained outside in the charge of Major Pomby and the Commander. Perhaps this was as well, since one of the temples enshrined a gigantic black stone lingam which, incidentally, was alleged to contain in its midst a rare and priceless jewel. There was so much sculpture that I should certainly have missed the indecencies if Major Pomby had not been considerate enough to mention them; as it was, it took me a long time to locate them, but I found them at last, a long file of soldiers marching gaily along, and another smaller, more elaborate, design which was frequently repeated. They were both sodomitic.
    The village of Garha we did not see; it lies behind His Highness’s grandfather’s tomb, and consists now, Babaji Rao said, of only about two hundred houses.
    I told His Highness that I had mistaken the tomb of his grandfather for a palace.
    â€œHe was poisoned,” he remarked.
    â€œIndeed?” I said. “How did that happen?”
    â€œMy great-grandmother. They quarreled, and she poisoned him.”
    He added that a king could never trust his relatives, they were always scheming and giving trouble of some sort; in fact, he said gravely, he had just received a report that some of his own kinsmen were plotting together in a neighboring State to destroy his son by Black Magic.
    Mrs. Montgomery gave me some advice this evening after dinner. Fixing me with her lorgnettes as we sat alone together over the dining-room fire, she said:
    â€œLook here, young man, I’ll give you a word of advice. Keep clear of Indian women! Do you understand me? Don’t look at them! Don’t notice them! They don’t exist!”
DECEMBER 31ST
    This morning His Highness took me out for a drive in one of his cars. He knows no more about cars than I do, and chooses them by the appeal of their names. So he bought a “Sunbeam.” It would surely be a very pretty car; but it seemed much the same as any other, and he was equally disappointed by a “Moon.” He asked me to-day what his next car should be, for two of the four he already has are getting very old, and I suggested a “Buick,” which was the only make I could call to mind; but after pronouncing the word two or three times with evident disfavor, and making it sound like a sneeze, he did not refer to the matter again. He was wearing a purple overcoat, of European cut, lined with pink; the yellow spots down the collapsed bridge of his nose had been renewed; he had not shaved. A travelling-rug was draped about his knees, and over the top of his green and gold bonnet and beneath his chin a bright red woolen muffler was bound.
    It is the last day of the old year, and he said he was extremely anxious to see a mongoose, for a mongoose is a very good omen; so we passed slowly along the Deori road about in search of one, while he fired rapid questions at me my circumstances, nodding briefly at my answers but never taking his eyes off the landscape.
    How many members were there of my family? Was I the only son? Did I have to support the family? Oh, not while my father lived? And what was my father’s business? And his income? And was he old? How old? Was he strong? Did he move, like His Highness himself, stiffly, with difficulty? And so on, to the object of them all—Would I stay with him and be tutor to his son (now aged two) when he should be old enough to need one, and be also his private secretary, and even, later on, his Prime Minister? Would I stay with him for—sixteen years? I said I didn’t know if I would, postponing a definite refusal by saying I could hardly be expected yet to know