Soon they reached
the _Nila Mahal_, or Blue Palace, as His Highness's residence was
called, with its iron-studded gates, carved doors, and countless wooden
balconies. A swarm of retainers in magnificent, if soiled, gold-laced
liveries filled the courtyards, and bare-footed sepoys in red coats,
generally burst at the seams and lacking buttons, and old shakoes with
white cotton flaps hanging down behind, guarded the entrance.
A wing of the Palace had been cleared out and hastily furnished in an
attempt to suit European tastes. The guests were accommodated in rooms
floored with marble, generally badly stained or broken. Two large chambers
tiled and wainscoted with wonderfully carved blackwood panels were
apportioned as dining-hall and sitting-room for the English visitors. All
the windows of the wing, many of them closely screened, looked on an inner
courtyard which was bounded on two sides by other buildings of the Palace.
The fourth side was divided off from another courtyard by a high blank wall
pierced by a large gateway, the leaves of the gate hanging broken and
useless from the posts.
Ida and Noreen were given rooms beside each other and were amused at the
heterogeneous collection of odd pieces of furniture in them. The old
four-posted beds with funereal canopies and moth-eaten curtains had
probably been brought from England a hundred years before.
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