Boggley and I went for a walk after tea to see the country. There isn't much to see except a long, straight brown road and a most insanitary-looking tank. The village is more interesting with its queer booths. I do think it is an incongruous sight to see, as I saw this afternoon, a native, naked but for a loin cloth, plying a Singer's sewing-machine. The natives looked sullen and rather suspicious, or is it only that I imagine it because they are so unlike the broad-smiling Santals with their cheerful _johar_? There are four trees before this bungalow, and at present two vultures are perching on each--horrible creatures, with long, scraggy necks. I pointed them out to Boggley, who was immediately reminded of a tale of a bumptious young civilian, new to the country, who was told, by one who had suffered many things at his hands, that the birds were wild turkeys, a much-valued delicacy; hearing which the youth promptly shot some and sent them round to the ladies of the station. Do you believe that tale? I don't. ... We have just finished dinner--much the most amusing dinner I ever ate. There is an intense rivalry, it seems, between our cook and the engineer-man's cook; and although we dined together, our bills-of-fare were kept jealously apart. Autolycus, of course, waited on us, and when he handed me the fish, and I helped myself to one of the four pieces, he said sternly, "Two, please," and I meekly took the other. The engineer had no fish, but on the other hand he had an entrée which was denied us. Both cooks rose to a savoury. (They _will_ give you the savoury before the sweet. If you insist on anything else, it so demoralizes them that the dinner is a ruin.) Our savoury was rather ambitious--stuffed eggs rolled in vermicelli. It tasted rather like a bird's-nest, and one felt it had taken a lot of making and rolling in brown hands. I envied the simpler poached egg on tomato of the engineer. You can't _pat_ a poached egg! _Rika, Feb. 9_. I have no home letters to answer this week. We forgot to give the Calcutta people the new address, so on Monday night the dâk-runner with his bells would jingle with my precious home mail into the Takai verandah; Mrs. Russel, having no other address, would re-direct them back to Calcutta, and they may reach us here about Sunday, It is tantalizing, but I don't pine for news in Rika so much as in most places. I am so thoroughly at home. I find the Mofussil is simply full of nice people. When we rode out here on Monday morning, and Mrs. Royle, with a shy small girl on either side, came down the verandah steps to meet us, I knew I was going to love staying here. There is an atmosphere about that makes for peace and happiness, and every day I like the place and the people more.