AMANULLAH

Minister, was there too. She lounged on an iron seat,
her blue eyes vacant, seeing perhaps the happy life of
the city from which she had been transplanted for
sver.

Pierri and I sat down on the grass.

" I think," said Pierri, " this is going to be gay."

It was. The band started suddenly. At least half
of the instrumentalists in the toy bandstand knew the
notes. They played valiantly, striving to drown the
sudden snorts of their companions. There were some
blowings where there should have been suckings.
There were some shrieks from those tortured brasses
where there should have been plaintiveness and sobbings.

Then we got into trouble again.

The policeman was inclined to be pitying. Here
were we, two apparent feringhe, who did not know that
it is not civilised to sit on the grass. Here were we, two
representatives of the West, setting a bad example to
the East. The policeman was sure that in Western
cities, from all he had been told, men in hats did not
sit on the grass when there were seats. Why then should
we seek to subvert the orders of the King who had been
Westernised ?

That much I read from his angry words, and his
violent gesticulations towards those unbending, un-
compromising iron seats. And, rather sheepishly, we
got up and sat bolt upright in those seats. Modernity
had won. For when a man has to leave the comfort
of fresh green grass, the smell of earth, to sit on an iron
park bench, then you may take it that there is an end
for ever to the amenities of the untrampled virgin
wastes of the world. We were supposed to be in one
now*

But Signor Pierri had been in " the forbidden laud "
longer than L His fine delicate features registered only

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