If the man with the beard had given me a
rupee I should have kept it as a memento of
a rather curious affair. But the consciousness
of having done my duty was my only
reward.

Later on I reflected that two gentlemen
like my friends could not do any good if
they foregathered and personated correspondents
of newspapers, and might, if they
“stuck up” one of the little rat-trap states of
Central India or Southern Rajputana, get
themselves into serious difficulties. I therefore
took some trouble to describe them as
accurately as I could remember to people
who would be interested in deporting them;
and succeeded, so I was later informed, in
having them headed back from the Degumber
borders.

Then I became respectable, and returned
to an Office where there were no Kings and
no incidents except the daily manufacture of
a newspaper. A newspaper office seems to
attract every conceivable sort of person, to
the prejudice of discipline. Zenana-mission
ladies arrive, and beg that the Editor will instantly
abandon all his duties to describe a
Christian prize-giving in a back-slum of a