I lived in Government-built ones with red brick walls and rail
ceilings, an inventory of the furniture posted in every room, and an
excited snake at the threshold to give welcome. I lived in
"converted" ones--old houses officiating as d?k-bungalows--where
nothing was in its proper place and there wasn't even a fowl for
dinner. I lived in second-hand palaces where the wind blew
through open-work marble tracery just as uncomfortably as
through a broken pane. I lived in d?k-bungalows where the last
entry in the visitors' book was fifteen months old, and where they
slashed off the curry-kid's head with a sword. It was my good luck
to meet all sorts of men, from sober traveling missionaries and
deserters flying from British Regiments, to drunken loafers who
threw whisky bottles at all who passed; and my still greater good
fortune just to escape a maternity case. Seeing that a fair
proportion of the tragedy of our lives out here acted itself in
d?k-bungalows, I wondered that I had met no ghosts. A ghost that
would voluntarily hang about a d?k-bungalow would be mad of
course; but so many men have died mad in d?k-bungalows that
there must be a fair percentage of lunatic ghosts.
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