For several
planters who resided near her road had laid a _dak_ for her, that is, had
arranged relays of ponies at various points of the way to enable the
journey to be performed quickly. Noreen's heavy luggage had gone on ahead
by bullock cart two days before, so the pair travelled light.
After her long absence from civilisation the diminutive engine and
carriages of the narrow-gauge railway looked quite imposing, and it
seemed to the girl strange to be out of the jungle when the toy train
slid from the forest into open country, through the rice-fields and by
the trim palm-thatched villages nestling among giant clumps of bamboo.
In the evening the train reached the junction where Noreen and Chunerbutty
had to transfer to the Calcutta express, which brought them early next
morning to Siliguri, the terminus of the main line at the foot of the
hills, whence the little mountain-railway starts out on its seven thousand
feet climb up the Himalayas.
Out of the big carriages of the express the passengers tumbled reluctantly
and hurried half asleep to secure their seats in the quaint open
compartments of the tiny train. White-clad servants strapped up their
employers' bedding--for in India the railway traveller must bring his own
with him--and collected the luggage, while the masters and mistresses
crowded into the refreshment room for _chota hazri_, or early breakfast.
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