Lady Meadowcroft was undecided between her hatred of dulness and her haunting fear that scorpions and snakes would intrude upon our tents and beds while we were camping.

In the end, however, the desire for change carried the day.

She decided to dodge the rainy season by getting behind the Himalayan-passes, in the dry region to the north of the great range, where rain seldom falls, the country being watered only by the melting of the snows on the high summits.
This decision delighted Hilda, who, since she came to India, had fallen a prey to the fashionable vice of amateur photography.

She took to it enthusiastically.

She had bought herself a first-rate camera of the latest scientific pattern at Bombay, and ever since had spent all her time and spoiled her pretty hands in "developing." She was also seized with a craze for Buddhism.