midday
She passed , at length , into sound unconsciousness . Thus the morning stages flowed beneath the tonga , personified in a winding ribbon of roadway , narrow , deep-rutted , inexpressibly dusty , lined uncertainly over a scrubby , sun-scorched waste . Sophia napped uneasily by fits and starts , waking now and again with a sleepy smile and a fragmentary , murmured apology . She roused finally very much refreshed for the midday halt for rest and tiffin , which they passed at one of the conventional bungalows , in nothing particularly unlike its fellows unless it were that they enjoyed , before tiffin , the gorgeous luxury of plenty of clean water , cooled in porous earthen jars . Amber , overwhelmed by the discovery of this abundance , promptly went to the extreme of calling in the khansamah to sluice him down with jar after jar , and felt like himself for the first time in five days when , shaved and dressed , he returned to the common living-room of the resthouse . The girl kept him waiting but a little while . Lacking the attentions of an ayah she had probably been unable to bathe so extensively as he , but eventually she appeared in an immeasurably more happy state of body and mind , calling up to him the simile , stronger than any other , of a tall , fair lily after a morning shower .