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 household 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.