dah, with his long white hair flowing over his shoulders, and his ivory
staff held in his hand. Within doors Mrs. Cameron still photographed. The
walls were covered with magnificent pictures which tumbled over the tables
and chairs and mixed in picturesque confusion with books and draperies. Mrs.
Cameron at once made up her mind that she would photograph her visitor and
for three days was in a fever of excitement. "She made me stand with spiky
coconut branches running into my head . . . and told me to look perfectly
natural," Miss North remarked. The same methods and ideals ruled in Ceylon
that had once ruled in Freshwater. A gardener was kept, though there was no
garden and the man had never heard of the existence of such a thing, for the
excellent reason that Mrs. Cameron thought his back "absolutely superb."
And when Miss North incautiously admired a wonderful grass green shawl that
Mrs. Cameron was wearing, she seized a pair of scissors, and saying: "Yes,
that would just suit you," cut it in half from corner to corner and made her
share it. At length, it was time for Miss North to go. But still Mrs. Cameron
could not bear that her friends should leave her. As at Putney she had gone with
them stirring her tea as she walked, so now at Kalutara she and her whole house-
hold must escort her guest down the hill to wait for the coach at midnight. Two
years later (in 1879) she died. The birds were fluttering in and out of the
open door; the photographs were tumbling over the tables; and, lying before a
large open window Mrs. Cameron saw the stars shining, breathed the one word
"Beautiful," and so died.