Talk of our “light fantastic toes,” indeed; what are they to a black fellow’s,—adorned, too, with a fine silver great-toe-ring to boot! _Mais revenons_. The ceilings, instead of lath and plaster, are composed of coarse cotton cloth, whitewashed, and tied with numerous tags or strings to a framework of bamboo running round the apartment, and concealed from view by the projecting cornice; between this and the rafters is a dark void, the airy hall of the rats and bandicoots, who sometimes hold their _soirées dansantes_ and _conversazione_ in it, careering over the cloth with lively and varied squeakings. _Purdahs_, _chicks_ (blinds), and _jhamps_ (frames of straw and bamboo), and sometimes glass doors, serve to close the entrances; the latter are, indeed, pretty common, except at very uncivilized and out-of-the-way stations. Furniture harbours reptiles and is expensive to carry about; officers’ bungalows are, consequently, but slenderly supplied with moveables. A couch, one or two tables, half a dozen chairs, a book-shelf, a _settrinjie_ (or cotton carpet, with blue and white stripes, and which also serves for the tent when marching), and a few wall-shades &c., generally constitute the adornments of an Indian officer’s residence. In the abodes of civilians, whose lots are cast in pleasanter places, and who lead less erratic lives than the military, and have far longer purses, things approximate more nearly to the English standard of luxury and comfort. At military stations, puckha flat-roofed houses are rare, and generally occupied by the general commanding, or some other exalted functionary in the receipt of large allowances. My friend’s bungalow was a regular Indian sub’s abode, and fell wofully below my standard of comfort, though in his opinion, formed on more experienced views of Indian life, it was quite as it should be. In the first place, the grand _salon_, or _salle à manger_, contained one square camp-table, two chairs and a half, a footstool of basket work, in the shape of a devil (the thing played with two sticks, I mean); his hog-spear and gun occupied one corner, and hard by hung suspended his library; not quite so large as the Bodleian, to be sure, but containing, nevertheless, some very good cut-and-come-again sort of books. First, there was a family Gibbon, properly docked and curtailed, a present from his grandmother; Gilchrist’s Grammar; Williamson’s _Vade Mecum_, and Taplin’s Farriery; the _Tota Kuhanee_,[22] Mother Glass’s Cookery, and a ponderous _tome_, which I at first took for a Family Bible with explanatory notes, but which turned out to be an abridgment of the rules and regulations of the Bengal army, monuments of the legislative skill of all the commanders-in-chief and governors-general from the time of Clive downwards.