Noreen judged it best to make no reply, but followed her irate friend in silence. Their _dandies_ were waiting outside the station, and as the girl got into hers and was lifted up and carried off by the sturdy coolies on whose shoulders the poles rested, she thought with a thrill of the last occasion on which she had been borne in a chair. CHAPTER XIII THE PLEASURE COLONY A town on the hill-tops; a town of clubs, churches, and hotels, of luxury shops, of pretty villas set in lovely gardens bright with English flowers and shaded by great orchid-clad trees; of broad, well-kept roads--such is Darjeeling, seven thousand feet above the sea. At first sight there is nothing Oriental about it except the Gurkha policemen on point duty or the laughing groups of fair-skinned, rosy-cheeked Lepcha women that go chattering by him. But on one side the steep hills are crowded with the confused jumble of houses in the native bazaar, built higgledy-piggledy one on top of the other and lining the narrow streets and lanes that are thronged all day by a bright-garbed medley of Eastern races--Sikkimese, Bhuttias, Hindus, Tibetans, Lepchas. Set in a beautiful glen are the lovely Botanical Gardens, which look down past slopes trimly planted with rows of tea-bushes into the deep valleys far below. As Noreen was borne along in her _dandy_ she thought that she had never seen a more delightful spot. Everything and everyone attracted her attention--the scenery, the buildings, the varied folk that passed her on the road, from well set-up British soldiers in red coats and white helmets, smartly-dressed ladies in rickshas, Englishmen in breeches and gaiters riding sleek-coated ponies, to yellow-gowned lamas and Lepcha girls with massive silver necklaces and turquoise ornaments. She longed to turn her chair-coolies down the hill and begin at once the exploration of the attractive-looking native bazaar--until she reached the English shops with the newest fashions of female wear from London and Paris, set out behind their plate-glass windows. Here she forgot the bazaar and would willingly have lingered to look, but Ida's _dandy_ kept steadily alongside hers and its occupant chattered incessantly of the many forth-coming social gaieties, until they turned into the courtyard of their hotel and stepped out of their chairs. When Ida had shown her friend into the room reserved for her she said: "Take off your hat, dear, and let me see how you look after all these years. Why, you've grown into quite a pretty girl. What a nice colour your hair is! Do you use anything for it? I don't remember its being as golden as all that at school." The girl laughed and shook the sunlit waves of it down, for it had got untidy under her sun-hat. "No, Ida darling, of course I don't use anything. The colour is quite natural, I assure you. Have you forgotten you used sometimes to call me Goldylocks at school?"